Helen (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)

THE GREEK TRAGEDY IN NEW TRANSLATIONS GENERAL EDITORS William Arrowsmith and Herbert Colder

EURIPIDES: Helen

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EURIPIDES

Helen Translated by

JAMES MICHIE and

COLIN LEACH

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin i Ibadan COPYRIGHT © 1981 BY JAMES MICHIE AND COLIN LEACH First published in 1981 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1992 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Euripides. Helen. (The Greek tragedy in new translations) I. Michie, Jarnes. II. Leach, Colin. HI. Title. PA3975.H4M5 882'.01 80-19680 ISBN 0-19-502870-8 ISBN 0-19-507710-5 (pbk.) 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Printed in the United States of America

To Ben Sonrienberg who sees more jokes than I do

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EDITOR'S F O R E W O R D

The Greek Tragedy in New Translations is based on the conviction that poets like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides can only be properly rendered by translators who are themselves poets. Scholars may, it is true, produce useful and perceptive versions. But our most urgent present need is for a re-creation of these plays—as though they had been written, freshly and greatly, by masters fully at home in the English of our own times. Unless the translator is a poet, his original is likely to reach us in crippled form: deprived of the power and pertinence it must have if it is to speak to us of what is permanent in the Greek. But poetry is not enough; the translator must obviously know what he is doing, or he is bound to do it badly. Clearly, few contemporary poets possess enough Greek to undertake the complex and formidable task of transplanting a Greek play without also "colonializing" it or stripping it of its deep cultural difference, its remoteness from us. And that means depriving the play of that crucial otherness of Greek experience—a quality no less valuable to us than its closeness. Collaboration between scholar and poet is therefore the essential operating principle of the series. In fortunate cases scholar and poet co-exist; elsewhere we have teamed able poets and scholars in an effort to supply, through affinity and intimate collaboration, the necessary, combination of skills. An effort has been made to provide the general reader or student with first-rate critical introductions, clear expositions of translators' principles, commentary on difficult passages, ample stage directions, and glossaries of mythical and geographical terms

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encountered in the plays. Our purpose throughout has been to make the reading of the plays as vivid as possible. But our poets have constantly tried to remember that they were translating plays—plays meant to be produced, in language that actors could speak, naturally and with dignity. The poetry aims at being dramatic poetry and realizing itself in words and actions that are both speakable and playable. Finally, the reader should perhaps be aware that no pains have been spared in order that the "minor" plays should be translated as carefully and brilliantly as the acknowledged masterpieces. For the Greek Tragedy in New Translations aims to be, in the fullest sense, new. If we need vigorous new poetic versions, we also need to see the plays with fresh eyes, to reassess the plays for ourselves, in terms of our own needs. This means translations that liberate us from the canons of an earlier age because the translators have recognized, and discovered, in often neglected works, the perceptions and wisdom that make these works ours and necessary to us. A NOTE ON THE SERIES FORMAT

If only for the illusion of coherence, a series of thirty-three Greek plays requires a consistent format. Different translators, each with his individual voice, cannot possibly develop the sense of a single coherent style for each of the three tragedians; nor even the illusion that, despite their differences, the tragedians share a common set of conventions and a generic, or period, style. But they can at least share a common approach to orthography and a common vocabulary of conventions. i. Spelling of Greek names Adherence to the old convention whereby Greek names were first Latinized before being housed in English is gradually disappearing. We are now clearly moving away from Latinization and toward precise transliteration. The break with tradition may be regrettable, but there is much to be said for hearing and seeing Greek names as though they were both Greek and new, instead of Roman or neo-classical importations. We cannot of course see them as wholly new. For better or worse certain names and myths are too deeply rooted in our literature and thought to be dislodged. To speak of "Helene" and "Hekabe" would be no less pedantic and absurd than to write "Aischylos" or "Platon" or viii

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"Thoukydides." There are of course borderline cases. "Jocasta" (as opposed to "lokaste") is not a major mythical figure in her own right; her familiarity in her Latin form is a function of the fame of Sophocles' play as the tragedy par excellence. And as tourists we go to Delphi, not Delphoi. The precisely transliterated form may be pedantically "right," but the pedantry goes against the grain of cultural habit and actual usage. As a general rule, we have therefore adopted a "mixed" orthography according to the principles suggested above. When a name has been firmly housed in English (admittedly the question of domestication is often moot), the traditional spelling has been kept. Otherwise names have been transliterated. Throughout the series the -os termination of masculine names has been adopted, and Greek diphthongs (as in Iphigeneia) have normally been retained. We cannot expect complete agreement from readers (or from translators, for that matter) about borderline cases. But we want at least to make the operative principle clear: to walk a narrow line between orthographical extremes in the hope of keeping what should not, if possible, be lost; and refreshing, in however tenuous a way, the specific sound and nameboundedness of Greek experience. 2. Stage directions The ancient manuscripts of the Greek plays do not supply stage directions (though the ancient commentators often provide information relevant to staging, delivery, "blocking," etc.). Hence stage directions must be inferred from words and situations and our knowledge of Greek theatrical conventions. At best this is a ticklish and uncertain procedure. But it is surely preferable that good stage directions should be provided by the translator than that the reader should be left to his own devices in visualizing action, gesture, and spectacle. Obviously the directions supplied should be both spare and defensible. Ancient tragedy was austere and "distanced" by means of masks, which means that the reader must not expect the detailed intimacy ("He shrugs and turns wearily away." "She speaks with deliberate slowness, as though to emphasize the point," etc.) which characterizes stage directions in modern naturalistic drama. Because Greek drama is highly rhetorical and stylized, the translator knows that his words must do the real work of inflection and nuance. Therefore every effort has been made to supply the visual and tonal sense required ix

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by a given scene and the reader's (or actor's) putative unfamiliarity with the ancient conventions. 3. Numbering of lines For the convenience of the reader who may wish to check the English against the Greek text or vice versa, the lines have been numbered according to both the Greek text and the translation. The lines of the English translation have been numbered in multiples of ten, and these numbers have been set in the right-hand margin. The (inclusive) Greek numeration will be found bracketed at the top of the page. The reader will doubtless note that in many plays the English lines outnumber the Greek, but he should not therefore conclude that the translator has been unduly prolix. In most cases the reason is simply that the translator has adopted the free-flowing norms of modern Anglo-American prosody, with its brief, breath- and emphasis-determined lines, and its habit of indicating cadence and caesuras by line length and setting rather than by conventional punctuation. Other translators have preferred four-beat or five-beat lines, and in these cases Greek and English numerations will tend to converge. 4. Notes and Glossary In addition to the Introduction, each play has been supplemented by Notes (identified by the line numbers of the translation) and a Glossary. The Notes are meant to supply information which the translators deem important to the interpretation of a passage; they also afford the translator an opportunity to justify what he has done. The Glossary is intended to spare the reader the trouble of going elsewhere to look up mythical or geographical terms. The entries are not meant to be comprehensive; when a fuller explanation is needed, it will be found in the Notes.

ON THE TRANSLATORS

Colin Leach studied Classics at Oxford University in the fifties and, following his first degrees, became a Classical Tutor at Brasenose College, specializing in Ancient Drama. After spending a number of years in the City of London, he returned to Oxford in 1979, where he is now a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews on a wide variety of classical subjects; and at present he is occupied with a

EDITOR'S FOREWORD

study of Aristophanic comedy. He is one of the relatively few remaining regular composers in Greek and Latin verse. His collaborator, fames Michie, is presently a Director of the Bodley Head in London. He holds an M.A. in Classics and English Literature from Oxford University. His publications include a book of poems, Possible Laughter (1959), and translations of various Latin poets, The Odes of Horace, The Poems of Catullus, and The Epigrams of Martial. He has also edited The Bodley Head Book of Longer Short Stories, and, most recently, translated Selected Fables of La Fontaine. ON THE TRANSLATION

"It is all iridescence," observed a contemporary French scholar of Euripides' Helen. He was speaking descriptively, not impressionistically. In the whole Euripidean corpus, there is nothing quite like this play, with its glittering wit, its ingenuity of contrivance and elegance of execution, and, at a deeper level, its subtext of tragedy and pain and the pathos of the impossible. At ever}' point, the sensitive reader will feel the dramatist's delight in his own virtuosity, in his ability to "dance in the chains of convention," outwitting, if not outraging, expectation with constant surprising peripeties. Like Orestes and Jon, the Helen is a complex tissue of sustained and often contrasting reversals whose dramatic effect is the sense of something unstated or unrevolved at the very heart of things, an ellipsis or enigma in reality itself. The reader feels the presence of a design in the unfolding rhythm of the obviously patterned reversals of dramatic events; but when he asks himself the meaning of the design, it slips away, as though the point were mysteriously suppressed or missing. The play refuses to resolve the problems raised by its own patterned reversals. And the reader feels this apparent absence of resolution as dissonance. In this respect, of course, the Helen is like many other Euripidean plays in which the essential structural principle is the systematic contrasting of different "worlds," different orders of reality. Again and again Euripides sets the ideal against the real, or the real against the ideal; the tragic against the comic-romantic or comic-pathetic; literary epic and high poetry against ordinary everyday reality; archaic against contemporary; the reality of "things as they are said to be" (myth or logos) against "things as they are" (actuality, fact, ergon). The result is xi

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the sense of consistent, even studied anachronism, which one finds everywhere in Euripides. The dramatist obviously takes pains to produce the sense of cultural clash, the dissonance in values, that necessarily results from juxtaposing these opposed "worlds" or realities. The mythical or ideal (not necessarily synonymous, at least in Euripides) values of the culture are set against its actual values (often nobler, but often more base than the ideal values), and the effect is inevitably that of a world where things are deliberately prevented from "phasing," from converging and integrating. The world, in short, as it must have seemed to Euripides in the last thirty years of the fifth century. But in the Helen (and the Orestes), this principle is pushed to its logical, or perhaps illogical, extreme. Here we have, in the form of a palinodic recantation of Euripides' persistent disparagement of Helen elsewhere,1 a denial of the "tragic" Helen by contrast with an invented "romantic" Helen of surpassing domestic virtue. Helen, we are told, did not go to Troy; she was abducted to Egypt where, after the Trojan War, the shipwrecked Menelaos finds her, her virtue besieged by an amorous Egyptian prince. Between these two Helens, the tragic adulteress of epic and the "retouched" Helen of our play, the poet seemingly invites his audience to choose. But in one sense—the crucial sense, I thinkthere is really no choice; or rather, the choice is merely apparent, a device ex hypothesi by which Euripides obliquely but firmly drives home his point—the utter futility of the Trojan (i.e. Peloponnesian) War. The palinodic fiction intensifies the tragedy of the war by demonstrating its futility, a war fought for the possession of a phantom. Helen—whoever "Helen" may be—is rehabilitated, but the result is to assert even more strongly the meaningless suffering of all those thousands who fought and died for ten long years to bring her home. In the end, the phantom who went to Troy is more real—more symbolically real, above all in her effect upon others—than the palinodic "flesh-and-blood" Helen of the play. Of what is Helen a symbol? What else but that figure of lethally intoxicating loveliness that, in play after play, floats across the Euripidean stage, luring men to their destruction in pursuit of a i. See, for instance, The Trojan Women or Hecuba, where Hecuba exclaims of her doomed daughter Polyxena, "O gods,/ to see there, in her place, Helen of Sparta,/ sister of the sons of Zeus, whose lovely eyes made ashes of the happiness of Troy!"

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FOREWORD

will-o'-the-wisp, the objectification of their own desire. "What Aphrodite has driven this army mad?", asks a character in another play, and he means: mad with desire, with the lust known to his contemporaries as eros: the lust for power, empire, wealth, conquest. Libido dominandi. Helen is Euripides' image of what Thucydides called arche, the power of rule which the historian regarded as the effective cause of the Peloponnesian War, and which Aristophanes .personified in the Birds as BasiJeia ("sovereignty," "rule," the reward which Pisthetairos, the winged imperialist of Cloudcuckooland, claims from Zeus as his right) ? The play is, as Colin Leach suggests, profoundly pacifist, a dramatic prayer as it were, almost a spell, to bring the "true" Helen home to Hellas where she belongs, out of foreign parts. "Foreign parts" will mean of course many things: Syracuse, where the great Athenian armada was already doomed; all those distant places in which the Athenians—in Thucydides' powerfully compact phrase, duserotes ton aponton, "unlucky lovers of distant (i.e. unobtainable) things"—had sought to extend their unappeasable hunger for empire; or perhaps that underworld from which Demeter and all Hellenes hungered to repatriate the lost Persephone. Whatever else this play may be about, it is surely not the "escapism" which has been so persistently attributed to it (and, with equal improbability, to Aristophanes' Birds). Translating such a play is ticklish high-wire work. For obvious reasons. One mis-step, and the whole airy artifice crumbles. If the translator miscalculates the timing or the intricate involutions of the reversals at the instant of their pivoting; if he misconstrues the tone or tension by overstressing real or ideal, tragic or romantic; if he fails to register the delicate inflections of character, then the play loses, if not quite everything, at least that sure-footed acrobatic balance on which its beauty depends. At every point the play challenges the translator to preserve the texture. For the texture embodies the dramatist's sense of the actual texture of human experience generally but above all at the time: life lived in the shuddering tension between real and ideal, between what men are and what they might aspire to be; between their own inconsistent 2. See Birds, 1536-41. Aristophanes plays punningly on the word basileia (princess, queen), which is thereupon glossed (by Prometheus) in the sense of basileia (sovereignty, power, etc.): "She [Basileia] is the stewardess of Zeus's thunder and of everything else, good counsel, good government, restraint, naval arsenals, slander, paymasters, and judicial payments too."

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natures, at once animal and divine, and the uncertain and perhaps unknowable purposes of gods represented so vividly in the reversals by which human existence is rhythmed, now for better, now for worse. To these extremely taxing demands, it seems to me that the translators have responded with consistent tact of understanding and poetic skill. One last point of important disagreement. In his Introduction, Colin Leach argues that the play abounds in signs of hasty composition. There are, no doubt, inconsistencies. But none of these, it seems to me, amounts to much when set against the astonishing technical control exhibited by the poet, above all in tone and texture—matters in which the poet's care and intelligence are evident throughout. Theonoe may not have been consulted by Helen because Helen, like the Servant, is perhaps as skeptical about prophecy as she is about her own mythological background ("There's an old story . . . which may or may not be true"). In the recognition-scene I see no problem whatever; it is handled with great technical agility, and it enjoyed, I suppose (given Aristophanes' parody of it), great popular success at the time. The Demeter ode admittedly poses real problems. But if we suppose, as we reasonably may,3 that the Iphigeneia at Tauris was performed as a third play in the same group with Helen and the (lost) Andromeda in 412 B.C., the problem largely dissolves. That is, the extremely close structural resemblances between the Iphigeneia at Tauris and the Helen then appear, not as structural selfplagiarism by Euripides, but unmistakable linking by means of coordinate—i.e. corresponding—structural units or actions (the recognition-scene, the escape, epiphany, etc.) .4 And since all three plays deal with the theme of la perduta ritrovata (in every case a Greek girl, lost or abducted or constrained by barbarians, is rescued and repatriated by a Greek hero), the beautiful ode telling of Demeter's anguished search for her own lost child, the ravished Persephone, with its ritual theme of loss and recovery, death and rebirth, falls into thematic place, linking the three plays to a 3. Cf. A. M. Dale, ed., Euripides Helen (Oxford, 1967), xxiv-xxviii, for a different view. Dale believes that the 1ph. Taur. is to be dated to 414, two years before the Helen. But her evidence is entirely metrical. And while such evidence is invaluable for dating Euripides' plays to distinct periods, metrical criteria are no better than carbon-14 dating for pinpoint-accuracy. Nor, it seems to me, can structural arguments be so easily dismissed. 4. See Richmond Lattimore's Introduction to his translation of Iph. Taur. in this series (Oxford, 1973).

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E D I T O R ' S FF O R E W O R D

larger mythological pattern of return, deliverance, and redemption. The great dramatist deserves the benefit of the critical doubt, even the doubts of his admirers. To no Euripidean play does Goethe's observation apply more accurately, I believe, than to the Helen: "Over the scenes of Hellas and its primitive body of legends he sails and swims like a cannonball in a sea of mercury and cannot sink even if he tries. . . ." Baltimore and New York

William Arrowsmith

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CONTENTS

Introduction, 3Introduction, Helen, 19 Notes, 87 Glossary, 101

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HELEN

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INTRODUCTION

Of the eighteen or nineteen plays of Euripides which have reached us in complete form, is any more elusive than Helen? Is it a tragedy, a comedy, a dramatic exercise in philosophy (a kind of remote prototype of Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Tom Stoppard's jumpers), a thoroughly perverse ballon d'essai, a play written for, and for performance by, women only—or what? The clues exist, but the labyrinth is tortuous and the answer multifaceted. First, then, this is one of Euripides' later plays; it was produced, probably at the city Dionysia, in 412 B.C. (a date which, exceptionally, can be taken as certain). He was as fertile as ever, with Orestes, Phoenissae, and, above all, Bacchae still to emerge; indeed, in fifty years he was to compose nearly ninety plays. A date can mean much, a little, nothing; this one, 412 B.C., does (as I shall shortly argue) mean a lot. For, even if there is no need to recount here the dismal story of incompetence, procrastination, and ill-fortune which led to the calamitous defeat of the Athenians' huge (and then reinforced) expedition to Sicily, let us at least remember that the final catastrophes, by sea and land, took place in autumn of 413 B.C. 412 B.C. was not an easy nor an agreeable year for the Athenians, who had now been at war with Sparta, almost continuously, for nineteen years. Next, Helen herself. The dramatist, to be fair, gives us warning of surprises to come; in the very first line he tells us, through Helen, that we are to imagine ourselves as being on the banks of the Nile: we are in a remote and unfamiliar country, where anything could happen, and anything might be expected. Egypt 3

INTRODUCTION

then—though far from unknown, of course—was still a distant land, difficult of access, full of marvels. A few lines later, and we are being introduced to Proteus: not the well-known Proteus of Homer, who had the gift of turning himself at will into other species, but quite a different one, a king of Egypt. Another few lines, and Helen is casting doubt (18-22*), in rather a sly fashion, on the story surrounding her own birth: There's an old story that Zeus changed himself into a swan once and, being chased by an eagle, flew to my mother Leda's lap for refuge and by trick got what he wanted from her— which may or may not be true.

What sort of Helen is heroine of this play will emerge as the plot develops; what the audience has first to cope with is the realization that Euripides' play is based on the violent variation of the myth which is ascribed to the Sicilian poet Stesichorus. Stesichorus was a lyric poet who flourished in the first half of the sixth century B.C. Legend, as recounted by Plato, claimed that, after he had told the conventional version of Helen's story, he was blinded: after all, she was by now regarded as a goddess, at least in Sparta. Hence, the famous Palinode, with its best-known lines: It is not true, this tale, You never once set sail On well-benched ships, nor went To Troy's tall battlement. (TR. c. M. BOWRA) Of course, too much violence to the myth would be unacceptable; hence Stesichorus seems to have invented the phantom-Helen, or "eidolon," who "really" went to Troy while the real-live Helen stayed with Proteus in Egypt. Further particulars about Helen's stay in Egypt are provided by Herodotus in his narrative of Egyptian history, and some of this is used by Euripides—but the most important elements of the plot are unquestionably the invention of the dramatist. For the unusual version of the myth, a Helen to match. In the tradition to which Athenian playgoers were—or, for that matter, modern playgoers are—accustomed, Helen was "one of the su* Unless otherwise indicated, line references throughout are to the English translation.

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preme figures of Greek mythology, daughter of Zeus and radiant exemplar of the power of Aphrodite, the living symbol of all men's desires for beauty, married to men of a little less than heroic stature, sinning and bringing destruction to a city and death to thousands, yet herself curiously unscathed and undimmed by it all." So, justly, A. M. Dale;1 and perhaps we shall think of those lines in the Iliad where the Trojan elders, seeing Helen walking on the walls of Troy, said, "Who on earth could blame the Trojan and Achaean warriors for suffering so long for such a woman's sake? Indeed, she is the very image of an immortal goddess." To be sure, later authors were sometimes less kind. For example, viciously and deliberately punning in a chorus of the Agamemnon, Aeschylus described her as "Hell to ships, hell to cities, hell to men." But in this play there is nothing of that. Here we have a wife of total faithfulness—yes, after seventeen years!— wronged by the gods and men. She cuts off her hair to feign mourning—she even wishes she looked plainer (277-78); she is positively agreeable to Menelaos, while being only too obviously (to us, not to him) very much cleverer than he is. She is already worried about the prospective spinsterhood of her daughter Hermione. She is altogether very different from the standard Helen who had appeared, only three years earlier, as a character of middling importance, in The Trojan Women. In The Trojan Women, Helen is faced with imminent death, after the fall of Troy, at the hands of Menelaos. She remains unmoved and dignified; well may Hecuba warn Menelaos not to fall once again under her spell, she "who snares the eyes of men." To Hecuba, Helen is the Queen of Love, and she comments bitterly on the similarity of the words "sensual" and "senseless" (in Greek, Aphrodite and aphrosyne). The most recent editor of the play says that Menelaos "treats Helen with apparent contempt. Beneath this veneer his true feelings can be seen. Helen's beauty is too much for him and we feel sure that it will finally prevail."2 Even if so much can hardly be extracted from the text, this is fair comment; for our purpose we need only note that there is nothing in this, the accepted, picture of Helen (and Menelaos) that would have alerted Athenian playgoers to the idea of a totally different Helen just three years later. We are, in brief, dealing with the standard version of the myth. 1. Helen (Oxford, 1967), p. vii. 2, K. H. Lee (London, 1975), p. xxv.

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It is quite clear that the treatment in Helen was startling. We have a tantalizing glimpse of just how startling it was from the sure-footed Aristophanes. In the very next year, 411 B.C., Aristophanes produced his Thesmophoriazusae, or Women at a Religious Festival. This play is exceptional in that it contains a prolonged parody of the Helen, including many direct quotations. This is inconceivable unless our play had secured speedy and widespread acclaim—or at least notoriety. And, even more to the point, in the passage which introduces the parody, the speaker (Mnesilochus) says, as he wonders how to bring Euripides to his assistance, "I know; I'll imitate the new Helen"—where the Greek work for "new," kainos, means not only "recent" but "newfangled." Nothing, then, is as it seems or as we should expect it to be in a well-ordered universe. Appearance is to be contrasted with reality—and frequently contrasted: by my count nearly 30 times in less than 1700 lines. We have set off on the long road, though we have not yet realised it, to the New Comedy, to Menander and his sets of identical twins, to the Menaechmi of Plautus, to The Comedy of Errors. This is (as A. W. Verrall3 saw) a woman's play. Verrall's insights were none the less real for being flawed; and while we need not accept his theories concerning the Helen, for all their brilliant expression, either in whole or in part—indeed, who ever has accepted them?—we shall assuredly accept that women have the best parts in both dramatic and moral terms. Take the men: Teucer? Little more than a blustering substitute for a program, he appears from nowhere, shortly to vanish, his purpose unachieved, into that same nowhere whence he came. Theoklymenos, who makes a brief, but unappealing, appearance toward the end, has small opportunity to shine, being hardly more than the personification of a threat. Menelaos himself, the brother of the great Agamemnon, cuts a dismal figure. Tattered and cowering on first appearance, he accepts being browbeaten by a servant (how Thersites would have enjoyed that!); he is slow in the uptake and impractical in invention: in short, anything but a hero. By contrast, the women all come out well: the portress who worsts Menelaos; the priestess Theono'e with her "shrine of justice" in her heart, in whose hands lies the safety of Helen and 3. Four Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, England, 1905), pp. 45-133.

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Menelaos; and, of course, Helen herself, the home and husbandloving Helen, faithful, ingenious, practical, never-despairing. At this point, a brief summary of the plot becomes essential. Helen, seated as a suppliant on the tomb of Proteus, is anxious to avoid a forced marriage with his son Theoklymenos, whose sister is Theonoe, the omniscient prophetess. Teucer enters to consult Theonoe (how did he know she was available?), but instead has a horrified exchange with the woman who, to him, is exactly like the hated Helen. Teucer tells Helen of the events at Troy before departing, his purposes not achieved, at the threat of the arrival of Theoklymenos. In the next scene, Menelaos makes his shipwrecked appearance, dressed (according to Aristophanes) in a piece of sailcloth—it is here that he has his discreditable episode with the portress. In due course, Helen and the Chorus emerge to join him, now knowing from Theonoe that Menelaos is indeed alive. Menelaos, who has arrived in Egypt accompanied by the Helen-eidolon, understandably finds the situation puzzling, and does not accept the real Helen for what she is until he hears of the disappearance, in surprising circumstances, of the phantom. Plans for escape—or, failing that, suicide—are made, but all depends upon the silence of Theonoe. Theonoe hears the pleas of Helen and Menelaos, and is persuaded to silence; the pair finally decide to trick Theoklymenos by pretending that Menelaos is dead (so that a ship can be provided for Helen in which to perform the funeral rites). The rest of the play is occupied with the successful execution of the plan; a passage between Menelaos and Theoklymenos in which the former purports to be one of his own crew provides yet more opportunity for double entendre and dramatic irony. The curtain is rung down, suitably enough, by an appearance ex machina by Helen's brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes; and all ends happily. So bald a narrative, though it can convey nothing of the language—serious, blustering, matter-of-fact, philosophical, moralizing, comic, or whatever—at least leaves us in no doubt that Helen is not, and cannot be in any "traditional" sense, a tragedy—if by "tragedy" we think of the Agamemnon or Oedipus Rex or Bacchae. To be sure, Richmond Lattimore makes a partly valid point when he says, listing the striking similarities between Iphigeneia in Tauris and Helen, "The occasion and sanctions of performance, the use of heroic legend, the tragic diction and meters, the tragic actors, costumes, and every circumstance de-

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INTRODUCTION

fined it as tragedy, and the happy ending made no difference."4 But there is, perhaps, some risk of circularity of argument here, which, if accepted, would make it difficult for a dramatist to be allowed to develop except within disagreeably narrow confines; moreover, Helen shows, at times, a striking informality of diction—there's a good example at one point when the messenger, seeing one (real) Helen and believing her to be the other (eidolon, real-to-him) Helen, says, in effect, "Oh, hello Helen— so you were here, after all." Again, we have seen that Euripides is using an unfamiliar version of the myth; and we can be certain that Menelaos' costume at least was of an outr6 appearance. There is a feeling of experiment throughout the play, difficult to communicate except by lengthy quotation—so that one may sympathize with Lattimore, who advised his readers to read Helen before reading his introduction to it. Perhaps, however, modern received opinion has gone too far in the other direction: the late Professor T. B. L. Webster wrote:5 The Helen should not be taken too seriously: it is gay, often exciting, sometimes comic, always beautiful. The story of the eidolon makes nonsense of the Trojan War, and both the old servant and the chorus touch on this theme. No doubt Euripides believes that quarrels should be settled by argument rather than by battle, and that commonsense is more useful than prophecy, but he treats this very lightly. . . . He has simply accepted the eidolon story and written a very pretty play on its consequences.

This seems a long way too dismissive. To begin with, it takes no account of the play's philosophizing, its emphasis on the meaning of words, the constant harping on the sophistic distinction between onoma (name = appearance) and logos (word) on the one hand, and soma (body), pragma (fact, reality), or ergon (fact) on the other. One thinks of Menelaos' bafflement on the possibility of two Zeuses co-existing, two Helens, two Troys (511-18): Is there a man by the name of Zeus living beside the Nile? No, for there's one Zeus only—the one in heaven. And where else in the world can there be a Sparta except beside the reed-bright, rippling Eurotas? 4. Iphigeneia in Tauris (New York, 1973), p. 5. 5. The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), pp. 201-02.

8

INTRODUCTION

. . . Can there possibly be a second Sparta and another Troy? Commentators have observed other sophistic associations, notably a use of reductio ad impossible which may even derive from Gorgias. Again, in famous lines (1089-91) Theonoe speaks of the notion of the survival after death of a spiritual element in mankind; and this—like a somewhat similar passage in Euripides' Suppliants6—early led to the noting of the relationship between Euripides and Anaxagoras: The dead may not have living minds like ours, but having once mixed with immortal ether they have immortal consciousness. So much, perhaps, is reasonably clear, relatively interesting: Euripides in old age was no less willing to experiment, no less willing to listen to the latest offerings of the philosophers. But an important paper by Charles Segal, entitled "The Two Worlds of Euripides' Helen," has taken this much further, by demonstrating the depth and complexity of the underlying philosophical structure. Segal's study, one of the most penetrating and authoritative discussions of the play, may in a few instances go a little further than the evidence, strictly speaking, permits; that is, in any case, unimportant, What he shows is that the play contains a whole pattern of antitheses that goes far beyond the onoma-pragma contacts: for example, death and life; true inner piety and outward regard for religious forms; cosmic perspective and narrow possessiveness; feminine values and masculine values; and, of course, peace and war. Segal develops his theme by taking three main generic contrasts—Reality and Appearance, Helen and Menelaos, and Theonoe and T'heoklymenos—and developing the underlying antitheses from there. His analysis concludes: The issue of whether the play is comedy or tragedy is, in the last analysis, irrelevant. Euripides, like many artists in the late stages of their work, has created a form which transcends the precise limits between genres. Shakespeare's late "tragic" romances—notably Cymbeline and Pericles—me a close analogy. The urge and the encouragement to go beyond the conventional form of tragedy must have come with the conception of the basic material of the plot: the complex interchanges of appearance and reality, the exotic setting, the philosophical mysticism, the ritual death and rebirth, the odes on Perse6. Gilbert Murray, ed. (Oxford Classical Texts, 1913), 11. 531-34.

9

INTRODUCTION

phone and the Mountain mother, the blend of sophistic epistemology and ancient, Odyssean archetypes. The equally "romantic" and "comic" features of plays like the Iphigeneia Among the Taurians and the Ton—to say nothing of the heroless Trojan Women or the tripartite Herakles—suffice to show that Euripides was in a period of intense artistic exploration.7 It is Segal's achievement that, among much else, he has given back to Helen its claim as a deeply serious play—a claim which even Wilamowitz would not and did not accept. By so doing, as I shall maintain, he has opened the way to an interpretation of Helen which will enable its title as a "tragedy" to be restored, even if in an indirect and unexpected way. In lines 972-77 (significantly, the lines not only are spoken by Helen to Theonoe, but also appear just after the play is halfway through) Helen says: God abominates violence; his commandment to all of us is: get and enjoy possessions, but not by robbery. For just as the sky belongs to all men, so too does this earth where each may fill his house with goods, so long as they are his own, and not snatched from his neighbor. In the context, where Helen is actually talking of her position vis-a-vis Theoklymenos, the lines had enough of a gnomic feel about them to ensure their elimination, in some editions, from the text. Nothing could be less likely. We can now no longer ignore the political background in which Helen made its appearance. Few among its audience did not have a relation who had been a casualty (whether dead or imprisoned) of the Sicilian Expedition; demographers have even asserted that perhaps one-quarter of free Athenian males of military age were so lost. This was the greatest single disaster in Athens' imperial history; worse, it could not possibly be imputed to virtuous motivation. Not for nothing, in Thucydides' History, does the account of the Sicilian Expedition immediately follow the appalling story of Athens' despicably cruel treatment of Melos. For the Athenian invasion of Sicily was nakedly devoted to gain at the expense of others, to win (as we might put it nowadays) the foreign currency, especially in terms of gold, that 7. Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA), 102 (1971), pp. 553-614.

10

INTRODUCTION

would enable them to carry on the war against Sparta with a growing rather than a dwindling band of allies. The expedition failed, failed catastrophically. Then is the Helen an "anti-war tract"? It appeared less than a year after the Sicilian disaster, at a time when it would be absurdly weak to say that questions of the war's likely outcome and usefulness were "in the air." Yet the play itself contains relatively little that can be interpreted, directly or indirectly, as an attack on war—though we must note that the play's most obvious direct attack on anything, divination, has immediate relevance to the craze for just that, which, in an outburst of superstition, broke out at exactly that time; as T'hucydides tells us in his usual clinical language. And that craze seems to have been particularly connected, not surprisingly, with the fate of the Sicilian Expedition. A servant says (806-21):

I do now see how full of lies, how rotten the whole business of prophecy is. . . . Much better to sacrifice and pray to the gods and leave prophets alone. Prophecy was invented as a bait for gullible man, but no one ever got rich without hard work by studying magic. Indeed, the passage chimes a little oddly in a play where so important a role is played by the priestess/prophetess Theonoe: this suggests that Euripides badly wanted to get it off his chest. One anti-war passage indeed there is: in the second antistrophe of the third choric ode we read (1240-52): Madmen, all who seek glory in war, trusting in ignorance to the sheer weight of the lance to end mortal debate I If battle and blood are to settle the score, grief and hate will never leave the cities of men. Through strife such men have found cramped sleeping room, a Trojan burial mound, who might by words have learnt some way to compound the quarrel over Menelaos' wife— you, Helen!

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INTRODUCTION

(Unsurprising sentiments, it may be felt, from the author of the elegy for the Athenians who fell in Sicily.) Here the voice of the pacifist comes through loud and clear, but in a relatively harmless place. (The other choric odes provide little or nothing of substance, and, as A. M. Dale aptly observes of the first of them, "like many of the songs in Helen this is an operatic aria whose words must not be expected to bear too close a scrutiny of their meaning.") Supporting evidence exists, but it must be used with due caution. Suppose, for a moment, that Helen was, in a valid sense, a reaction to the Sicilian expedition's failure, then there was not much time to write it. Bad news reaches Athens, autumn, 413 B.C.; Helen written, and rehearsed, 413/12 B.C.; Helen produced: city Dionysia, roughly end-March, 412 B.C. In such a case, one would expect evidence of hasty composition to exist. It not only exists: it abounds. The play rests upon the shaky substructure of a giant fault; a fault which Euripides will have recognized, but (since he was not writing for pedants 2,400 years later) will have ignored. Theonoe is omniscient, we learn immediately; yet for seventeen years Helen has not bothered to consult her, whether as to the Trojan War, or the fate of Menelaos, or the prospects of her eventual reunion with him. Of course, Euripides may have felt that such a detail would readily be passed over (more likely, not noticed at all during performance) by the audience: but there is more, as soon as one starts looking. First, the Teucer episode. It is held to presage the arrival, later on, of Menelaos; but it contains nothing that a (character-eliminating) dialogue with, say, Theonoe could not have conveyed. Next, the recognition (anagnorisis): two attempts at this have to be made, and one may (or may not) believe that what we have is an imperfect conflation of two attempts to achieve, in a difficult philosophical context, a satisfactory synthesis. There is much minor evidence, but it is technical in the sense that, while arguable, it depends on knowledge of both Greek and Greek stagecraft; better to look at one more major point of concern to critics. The final choric ode of the play, generally known as the "Great Mother" or "Mountain Mother" ode, has long been a source of worry to scholars. Choric odes are "supposed" to be related, even if remotely, to the general themes of the play; in this case, in12

INTRODUCTION

genuity has been forced to its limits. Demeter is (but the text is sadly corrupt) distressed at the loss of her daughter. What on earth (or elsewhere) has this got to do with Helen? One can hardly blame A. W. Verrall for claiming that this ode helps to prove that Helen was first performed at a festival when rites attended only by women were performed in honor of the Greek Mother Demeter, and her daughter Persephone. Another, less sensitive, suggestion can be advanced: Helen needed another choric ode at about this point (as a play it is unevenly balanced between scenes, which must have put considerable strain on the three actors allowed by convention); may not Euripides, in some haste, have inserted an ode from his reservoir? After all, if our argument has any force, it was not the choruses where his message was likely to lie. Lastly, we have already drawn attention to the fact of the close comparison with Iphigeneia in Tauris; and, once again, an explanation obtrudes itself—Euripides' willingness to use another framework, and available material, to ease the rapid production of a play where he was more concerned with the message than the medium. Haste would explain (if not excuse) much that has for long exercised the attention of critics; while, from the pedantic point of view, a number of lines which have been rejected as spurious on grounds of context, taste, meter, or Greek might just possibly, on the basis of the argument we have advanced, be reprieved. It is at this point that we must look for more direct support from the play itself—or in its motif. And it stares us in the face. Of course, it is not the theme, but the starting-point, of Helen that the Greeks and Trojans went to war for ten years over a phantom—a war which Thucydides himself, in the opening chapters of his History, is far from decrying in terms of importance. A phantom/ Euripides was not writing for fools, and no underlining would have been necessary for his audience to consider that, just possibly, another people was, even now, at war in search of a different sort of phantom. In any case, a more direct approach would have been at best imprudent. Euripides (it is said) had already suffered arrest and impeachment—possibly on political grounds—"impiety" being the charge; he was far too subtle a person, and dramatist, to run any such risk needlessly again. There is no hint of subversion in Helen—except to those who, by alleging it, would ex hypothesi have admitted the existence of

13

INTRODUCTION

aggression and the corruption of greed. Naturally, even in Euripides, not everything is perfectly carried out: there are frigidities in Aeschylus, and bad jokes in Aristophanes, just as Homer nods. In Helen, there is much that is, in one way or another, imperfect; but if (and it cannot be so very unlikely) we suppose that he wanted to produce a play with relevance to Athens' morally and (nearly) physically bankrupt situation, and produce it in great haste, then perhaps we have the plausible outcome: much intellectual depth and brilliance, but imperfect stagecraft. Nor, of course, does this mean that the arguments advanced by Charles Segal are in any way irrelevant. Rather, their relevance is heightened: and the themes are always contrast and comparison. The Trojan War was fought over a phantom: for what, precisely, after nineteen years, was the Peloponnesian War being fought? Was Sicily's gold real, or another phantom? Did the public attitude of Athens—as best seen by us in the account given by Thucydides of Pericles' speeches—really accord with its real-world behavior? Or did even Athenians say one thing and do another? If we even begin to accept that thoughts like these were in Euripides' mind when he wrote Helen, then we should also feel that it no longer makes sense to ask whether the play is "technically" a tragedy, or a comedy, or a vehicle for philosophical expression, or anything else. It is all of these, and the philosophical content may have been partly serious, partly camouflage (who can tell?): but it is something much more than any of these things, something that should appeal to us more nearly than the appalling destiny of the House of Atreus, the self-wrought tragedy of Oedipus, even la crise psychologique of the Bacchae: it is no less than the cry, muted, parabolic, ironical, but nonetheless genuine and impassioned, despairing the destruction, both spiritual and moral, of Athens herself. Helen is not a tragedy: but behind it lies one of civilization's greatest tragedies. Once this is understood, much else falls into place, and the depth of the underlying philosophical themes discerned by Charles Segal becomes comprehensible in a way that would hardly be the case in the lighthearted frolic postulated by Webster. And—a woman's play? Yes, certainly. It is not women who make war. The men in Helen are all warriors, of a kind, and poorly do they come out of it; but for morality, justice, compassion (a quality of extreme rarity in Greek tragedy) we must go to Helen and Theonoe. No need for Verrall's elaborate hypothesis when a much more plausible explanation lies before our very eyes. 14

INTRODUCTION

Aristophanes, of course, did much the same sort of thing, but in a less constricted medium (and with a correspondingly greater risk of prosecution). As we have already observed, his acute ear and eyes were to make practical use of Helen in the Thesmophoriazusae in 411 B.C.; but he had already written and produced his own version of Helen—The Birds—in 414 B.C., not long after the Sicilian Expedition had set sail (and well before any authoritative report of success or failure could have reached Athens). Birds is a play of escape—the play of escape: where after all was CloudCuckoo-Land invented? A play does not need to drive lessons home in a heavy-handed manner to be effective. Euripides, like Aristophanes, was unusually lucky in his audiences. It remains to place Helen within the broader sweep of Athenian history. Close in time to Lysistrata (another play, interestingly enough, in which anti-Laconian feelings are muted), it must have held a poignant message for Athenians who had already been at war for nearly twenty years and who were still to be at war for another eight. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the great years of Athens, in both physical and cultural terms, were approaching their end. Sophocles and Euripides were both to die before the turn of the century; Aristophanes' verve would soon vanish, to decline into the duller ore of the Ploutos. The age of Pericles had already been replaced by men of lesser stamp— Cleon, Theramenes, and the like. For Athens, the fifth century B.C. was a glorious one, but it took an appalling toll: one thinks of the famous inscription, now in the Louvre, commemorating those of the Erechtheid tribe who died, all in the same year, fighting "in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Halieis, in Aegina, at Megara." The year was 459 B.C., just before the production of Eumenides. Just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in the spring of 431 B.C., Euripides himself breathed the spirit of Periclean optimism in a chorus of the Medea: From old the sons of Erechtheus know felicity; The children of blessed gods, Born from a land holy and undespoiled, They pasture on glorious wisdom Ever walking gracefully through the brightest of skies, Where once, men tell, the Holy Nine, The Pierian Muses, Created golden-haired Harmony. (TR. c. M. BOWRA) IS

INTRODUCTION

In 430, Euripides produced his Children of Herakles, presenting in an heroic setting an ideal Athens which assumes responsibility for the oppressed, whencesoever they come. In 424, in the Sup plianrs, Athens is still an ideal city, a true democracy, the home of free speech. But Pericles died in 429 B.C., and Euripides lived on to produce Helen, in which a glittering fajade of point and counterpoint does so much to conceal "something far more deeply interfused": the futility of war, the especial futility and immorality of this war, and the inexorable decline of Athens. THE TEXT

We have normally, but not invariably, followed the text favored by A. M. Dale in her edition (Oxford, 1967). The text of Helen has come down to us in a very imperfect state (it is one of those nine plays of Euripides for which there is only a single manuscript tradition) and in places it is seriously, even desperately, corrupt; this is especially the case in the choruses (where copyists were always apt to become confused owing to their ignorance of the meters employed and the difficulty of the language) where, all too often, one can do little better than follow what was probably the intended sense. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this—and the difficulties which are thereby posed for the translator. In an exegetical edition one can discuss textual cruces, point out the problems, arrive at a preferred solution—or decide that one cannot be found. The translator has no such resource; and we can do no more than to indicate in the notes a few of those places where the text is most deeply corrupted and what an alternative rendering might be. More than this: there are places where we do not know, and cannot know, for certain, who is speaking (there are several such places in Helen, one of them of great importance). Actors' later interpolations, too, abound, and we have taken a sturdy approach: when we believe—usually in concert with A. M. Dale—that lines have been interpolated, we have omitted them. It should be added that such lines often give themselves away by their awkwardness, extravagance, or irrelevance. In reading a translation, it is only natural for the Greekless reader to assume that the text has been transmitted straight from heaven; we ask you to remember that such is very far from being the case. Our own faith has by no means always proved robust enough to feel really confident that Euripides wrote such-and-such

16

INTRODUCTION

and not anything else in any given passage; but translators must wield swords to cut the most Gordian of knots. The foregoing comments refer to, but do little to describe, the remarkable thesis advanced by A. W. Verrall (Four Plays of Euripides, Cambridge University Press, 1905, pp. 43-133). Verrall was famous for providing a perverse answer to the right question, and it is worthwhile looking briefly at what he says on Helen, not because of his far-fetched solution, but because of the questions which he, explicitly or implicitly, raises. Verrall argues that Helen was originally not written for public presentation, but as an ironic and partly self-parodying drama, composed for private performance at a house on the island of Helene belonging to a woman of Athens, the occasion being a gathering of women who had been celebrating the Thesmophoria. Needless to rehearse Verrall's arguments; what are the reasons which have led him to theorize in this way? Just those odd aspects of the play to which we have drawn attention: A. B. c. D. E.

the rehabilitation of Helen, least reputable of her sex; the seeming irrelevance of the "Great Mother" choric ode; the strangely unused omniscience of Theonoe; certain structural parallels with Iphigeneia in Tauris; the.superfluity of the Teucer episode.

And there are other points, sometimes (to be candid) of an implausibly detailed nature. Here we need only observe that Verrall's acute eye, striking at an angle to reality, has observed just those anomalies which have led us to a quite different, perhaps more mundane, conclusion. But in one, relatively minor, point, Verrall's analysis is faultless. Menelaos is generally, as already noted, really rather stupid. But at one point, when Helen proposes that he should pretend to be the reporter of his own death, he retorts: "But how will this trick help our combined escape?/ It's rather an old-fashioned one, you know." (1131-32). Yes, indeed: both Aeschylus (in Choephori) and Sophocles (in Electra) had used the device before, and it is just that fact that, very boldly, he is referring to. A line like that serves to remind us that there was an ironic as well as a deeper side to the Helen; a flawed jewel, but a jewel. Oxford, England

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COLIN LEACH

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HELEN

CHARACTERS

HELEN daughter of Zeus and Leda TEUCER a Greek CHORUS of captive Spartan women LEADER

MENELAOS husband of Helen and King of Sparta OLD WOMAN portress at the palace SERVANT one of Menelaos's men THEONOE sister of Theoklymenos THEOKLYMENOS King of Egypt MESSENGER a servant of Theoklymenos DIOSKOUROI KASTOR AND POLYDEUKES, sons of Zeus and Leda, now gods

Line numbers in the right-hand margin refer to the English translation only, and the Notes at p. 87 are keyed to these lines. The bracketed line numbers in the running headlines refer to the Greek text.

The scene is Egypt, before the royal palace. On one side of the stage is the tomb of Xing Proteus, where HELEN has tafcen sanctuary. The stage represents a palace front, with central double doors. To the left of the stage is the substantial structure of the tomb of Proteus, King of Egypt. HELEN is found center-stage.

HELEN Here live the lovely water-nymphs of Nile who brings the melted white snow down to water the plains of Egypt starved of blessed rain. Proteus was king here, when he lived, controlling all Egypt from his island home of Pharos. He'd married one of the sea-nymphs, Psamathe, who'd left her husband Aiakos, and she bore him two children in this palace: first a son, Theoklymenos, and then a young princess, the apple of her mother's eye—Eido she was named as a child, but when she reached the age of marriage she was called Theonoe, for she had understanding of all things that are, and are to come, prophetic powers inherited from her mother's father, Nereus. My own home country, though, is pretty well known, for it's Sparta, and my father was Tyndareus. There's an old story that Zeus changed himself into a swan once and, being chased by an eagle, flew to my mother Leda's lap for refuge and by that trick got what he wanted from her— which may or may not be true. My name is Helen. Now let me tell you my sad history. The three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite, and Zeus-born, virgin Athene, went one day to Paris's valley hide-out on Mount Ida quarreling about their beauty and determined to have the issue judged. And Aphrodite 21

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HELEN

offered my beauty—if anything can be called beautiful that brings misery—as a bribe, and me as a wife, to Paris, and so won. Paris quitted his mountain herds and came to Sparta to collect his bride; but then Hera, disgruntled in defeat, deprived her rival's solid promise of all substance: she gave the Trojan prince not the real me but a living likeness conjured out of air, so that believing he possesses me he possesses only his belief. Then Zeus compounded these misfortunes with new plans, for in order to relieve the cumbered earth of her plethora of children and to enhance the reputation of the mightiest Greek he loaded with a war the land of Greece and the unlucky Phrygians. Yet all those years the Helen who endured the siege of Troy, the Helen the Greek spears fought for as a prize, was me only in name. For I myself was wrapped in a cloud, hurried through pockets of air and set down in the palace of Proteus here by Hermes—proof that Zeus did not forget me; indeed he chose the most civilized of men to help me keep my marriage-bed unstained. So here I've been while my unhappy husband, bent on recovering me, mustered an army and sailed off to the battlements of Troy. Men died for me in thousands by Skamander, and I, the passive sufferer in it all, became anathema, for it seemed to the world that I had betrayed my husband and that he had pushed Greece into a disastrous war. Then why do I go on living? For this reason: I have it on the authority of Hermes that once my husband learns the truth—that never did I go to Troy, never was I unfaithful— I shall live with him again in famous Sparta.

22

[27-59]

30

•*"

50

M

HELEN

[60-84]

HELEN moves left across stage to stand by the tomb of Proteus. As long as the old king Proteus enjoyed life I was immune from suitors, but his son, Theoklymenos, now that he's dead and buried, haunts me and hunts me—which is why I've come, loyal to my vows to Menelaos, to the tomb of Proteus as a suppliant to pray for their preservation. Thus at least, although my name is vilified through Greece, my body here remains free from reproach.

70

Enter TEUCER, right. He first sees and is impressed by the imposing form of the palace, then, almost at once, catches sight of HELEN. TEUCER Who is the lord of this imposing place? These royal precincts, this proud corniced mass, suggest the house of the God of Wealth himself. Hah! Ye gods, what's this I see? An abomination! The very image of that murderous woman who was the ruin of me and all the Greeks! May the gods abhor you for resembling Helen! If I weren't a. guest standing on foreign soil one of my trusty arrows would soon pay you for looking like the daughter of Zeus—with death.

K

HELEN Poor man, whoever you are, don't flinch away. Why detest me because of what happened to her? TEUCER My fault—my anger got the better of me, for the whole of Greece loathes the daughter of Zeus. Forgive me, lady, for the words I spoke. HELEN Who are you, though? Whereabouts do you come from? TEUCER I am one of the Greeks who fought and suffered. 23

M

HELEN

[85-105]

HELEN No wonder, then, that you abominate Helen. TEUCER My name is Teucer, Telamon was my father, and I was born and raised in Salamis. HELEN What brings you, then, to the delta of the Nile? TEUCER I am an exile. I was driven from home. HELEN You have my sympathy. Who was responsible? TEUCER The closest friend a man could have—my father!

10

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HELEN But why? For the fact implies some sort of doom. TEUCER My brother Ajax died at Troy—my doom. HELEN How? You didn't kill him yourself, surely? TEUCER He died by his own hand, fell on his sword. HELEN Was he mad, then? No one sane attempts self-slaughter. TEUCER Have you heard of a certain Achilles, Peleus' son? HELEN He was one of Helen's suitors, I've been told. TEUCER When he died he left his arms to be contested. HELEN And how could that have caused Ajax's death? TEUCER Another man won the arms—and he killed himself. HELEN And so your troubles stem direct from his? TEUCER They do, in that I failed to die with him. HELEN Did you really go to the famous city of Troy?

24

11

°

HELEN

[10&-27]

TEUCER I brought about its downfall—and my own. HELEN And is it razed flat now, burnt to the ground? TEUCER So thoroughly that no trace of a wall is left. HELEN Oh, Helen, Helen, for you the Trojans perished! TEUCER The Trojans? The Greeks too! A holocaust! HELEN How long is it since the city was destroyed? TEUCER Almost seven harvests have gone round since then.

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HELEN And before that how long were you at Troy? TEUCER Innumerable months, ten years in all. HELEN Tell me, did you capture the Spartan woman? TEUCER Menelaos did, and dragged her off by the hair. HELEN Did you see the unhappy queen? Or is this hearsay? TEUCER I saw her as plainly as I'm seeing you. HELEN But perhaps the gods made you imagine it all. TEUCER Please talk of something else. Stop harping on her. HELEN And is Menelaos home now with his wife? TEUCER He's certainly not in Argos—nor in Sparta. HELEN That's terrible news—for some who hear it anyway. TEUCER He's said to have vanished, lost, and his wife with him. HELEN But surely all the Greeks sailed back together? 25

13

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HELEN

[128-49]

TEUCER They did, but a storm scattered them far apart. HELEN Where were they on the wide salt sea when it struck? TEUCER Halfway through their passage of the Aegean. HELEN And no one's had news since of his having landed? TEUCER No one. All Greece considers him as dead. HELEN (aside) I am crushed. (To TEUCER) AndThestios' daughter—is she living? TEUCER Leda, you mean? No, she died long ago.

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HELEN You're not suggesting Helen's disgrace destroyed her? TEUCER They say so. Though she was royal, she hanged herself. HELEN And her sons, Kastor, Polydeukes—dead or alive? TEUCER Both, you might say. There are two different rumors. HELEN Give me the stronger one. (Aside) Nothing but grief! TEUCER It's said they became gods, in the shape of stars. HELEN Those words are welcome, but what's the other story? TEUCER That shame for their sister made them end their lives on their own swords. But enough of tales of the past— I've no desire for a second bout of tears. My reason for arriving at this palace is to see the prophetess Theonoe. Will you introduce me, so that I can ask advice from the oracle how best to obtain a fair wind for my voyage on to Cyprus? For Apollo has told me I shall settle there 26

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°

HELEN

[150-74]

and give the island name of Salamis to my new home in memory of my birthplace. HELEN The ship and the sea will guide you there themselves. But, sir, make your getaway from this place before Theoklymenos sees you—he's the king: at the moment he's away, bloodily engaged in slaughtering animals with his pack of hounds— for any Greek caught here he puts to death. Don't press me to know why, I'm saying nothing; and anyway what good could the knowledge do you? TEUCER Kind and frank words, which I appreciate, lady. May the gods reward you richly in return! Your similarity to Helen is only skin-deep; inside you're not a bit like her. May she die horribly and never reach home, but you—good luck be with you all your life!

16

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17

°

Exit TEUCER right. The CHORUS of captive Greek women enters Jef t HELEN Raising a great cry for a great grief, how shall I bring my misery to birth for its relief? To what spirit of music shall I appeal for a dirge, for a lament bitter enough to suit the burden of sorrow I feel? Come, deathly daughters of Earth, you sirens with bird-wings, and with your pipe or lyre or Libyan flute strike up a sad accompaniment, some grim, despairing strain in sympathy with my sufferings, in harmony with my pain, so that your music, matching my agony, may as my offering please Persephone 27

18

°

HELEN

[175-211]

down in her dark hall— a chant of blood, a black paean rising in unison with the tears I now let fall for the souls of the dead and gone.

19

°

Enter CHORUS CHORUS By the blue pool, where the young rushes throng, I happened to be drying in the sun's golden beams my purple clothing spread on the curling grass's bed when I heard a pitiful crying, no voice of joy, no song fit for the lyre, but anguished, haunting screams such as a mountain nymph, a naiad, flying from Pan's brute force might utter, at bay, in the rocky hollow of her source. HELEN Women of Greece, captives of a foreign oar, I have news for your ears. A Greek mariner has come ashore bringing fresh tears to mingle with my tears. Troy is a smoking ruin of war, destroyed by my deadly face— or, rather, by my ill-used name. Leda, my mother, has put a noose round her neck for shame of my disgrace. My wandering, sea-tossed husband is lost, is lost, and Sparta's glory and pride, Kastor and his twin-born brother, will never, never be seen again on the pounded, hoof-ringing plain or the meadows beside reed-fringed Eurotas where the young men used to trainwrestle and run and ride. 28

2BO

21

°

22

°

HELEN

CHORUS Mourn, mourn for Helen hounded by her doom. Lady, you were given a mocking gift, a life not to be borne, when Zeus swooped from mid-heaven in the shape of a swan and with a flash of snow-white wings planted you in your mother's womb. Since then what sufferings, what trials have you not undergone? Leda is dead; your two brothers, the beloved sons of Zeus, are far away from happiness; your land of birth is hidden from your eyes; throughout the cities of Greece there runs a rumor, lady, that implies you sleep in a barbarian's embrace; your lord is a corpse on the sea's bed; never again will you bless your father's house or grace Athene's brazen temple with your face. HELEN Alas, whose hand in the known world felled the pine that ultimately spelled ruin to Troy? For from that tree was nailed and hammered the ship that Paris sailed with his pirate oarsmen over the waves to shatter the peace of my hearth in his quest for the prize of my lovely disastrous eyes and the pleasures of my marriage-bed; and with him, false to all she'd said, came the murderous goddess of love who sent to their graves the warriors of both Troy and Greece. And then her highness Hera, who shares the bed of Zeus and on a gold throne sits beside him, sent her message-bearer, the swift-footed son of Maia, down. 29

[212-42]

23

°

24

°

25

°

HELEN

[243-77]

He caught me when I was gathering fresh roses in my gown to take to Athene's temple, snatched me and brought me through the glittering zone of air to this bleak shore, where I became a wretched prize in the fierce tug of war between all Greece and Priam's sons. And now, where the river Simois runs, I'm soiled with a false shame that's mine only in name, only in name.

26

°

27

°

LEADER You have sorrow enough, we know; but one must bear the burdens of life as lightly as one can. HELEN Look at me, friends. I'm yoked, half-choked with trouble! Was I not born a monster? My entire life, every wretched event, has been unnatural, for which I blame my beauty as much as Hera. If only it could have been wiped clean like a picture and something less alluring painted over, so that the Greeks, forgetting the blemishes that chance has put on me, might bear in mind my better, not my worse side, as they do. When a person's hopes hang on a single issue and the gods treat him badly, then it's hard, but still it's bearable. But in my case misfortunes hem me in from all directions. In the first place, I'm both innocent and slandered— and being saddled with another's crimes cuts deeper than the burden of your own. On top of that the gods uprooted me from my own fatherland and put me down here, among savages, cut off from friends, a slave among slaves, for in barbarian countries all men in effect are slaves except for one. And the sole anchor in my sea of troubles,

30

2ao

^

HELEN

the hope that my husband would arrive one day and rescue me, is gone, for he's gone toodead. And my mother's dead, and I "destroyed" her— untrue, unjust, but the injustice sticks. My daughter, once the sunshine of my life and all our house, withers in spinsterhood, dead are my two twin brothers whom they call the sons of Zeus, and dead is my own heart through what's been done to me, though I live on. And last and worst, even if I did reach home they'd bar the gates, thinking I was the Helen that Menelaos went to fetch from Troy. If my husband were alive, he'd recognize me, as I should him, by certain special signs private to us; but he's not, he's lost forever. Then why am I still alive? What's left to suffer? I could choose marriage as a way of escape, live with this uncouth foreigner and preside at his rich table, but when a husband's hateful to a wife she hates even the richest house. This is the doom and depth of my despair: the very beauty that makes other women happy has proved for me a blasting curse.

[278-313]

30

°

31

°

LEADER Helen, don't be too sure that what that Greek, whoever he is, reported is all true. HELEN But he made it clear enough my husband's dead. LEADER The spoken word can often turn out false. HELEN But equally it can have the ring of truth. LEADER You're biased towards the dark view, not the bright. HELEN It's fear that grips and drives me—into fear. LEADER How much goodwill do you have inside the palace?

31

3M

HELEN

[314-45]

HELEN They're all my friends, except my hot pursuer. LEADER Do you know what you must do now? Leave this sanctuary— HELEN What are you trying to say? What's your proposal? LEADER —and go to the house of the daughter of the sea, the Nereid Theonoe, who knows all things. Ask her whether your husband's still alive, enjoying daylight. When you've got your answer, weep or rejoice according to the news; for what good can it do you to grieve now, before you know the facts? Listen to me. I'm willing to accompany you myself to ask for her clairvoyant revelation. Women should always give each other help. HELEN Friends, I shall do what you say. Hurry to the palace, hurry through the gate to learn the outcome of my fate.

33

°

34

°

CHORUS You call me; gladly I go. HELEN Ai, ai, black day! What words of horror or unhappiness am I about to hear? CHORUS Dear heart, don't leap ahead of your fear, don't play the prophetess to your own woe. HELEN What deep distress has my husband suffered? Does he see the sun chariot his four horses and the stars run on their nightly courses, or does he share the dead man's doom below?

32

35

°

HELEN

[346-73]

CHORUS Accept the future, whatever face it may wear, as a friend. HELEN Eurotas, my home river, sweet-running and reed-green, to you I appeal, be my witness: if the report is true that my husband's dead, I swear I shall end—

36

°

CHORUS What do these wild words mean? HELEN I shall pay the price of my guilt with my lifenoose my neck with a strangling rope or use the bloody, throat-severing knife till the sharp, cold thrust of steel and the flesh's cruel ordeal make of my death a sacrifice to the three goddesses and Priam's boy, who once kept herds and tuned his pipe on Ida's slope.

37

°

CHORUS May bad luck shift elsewhere and leave you hope. HELEN Oh, suffering, pitiful Troy, destroyed by a deed of mine that was never done! My beauty, Aphrodite's gift, which won the prize, has borne a monstrous child of blood and tears, agony piled on agony, sorrow multiplied on sorrow. Countless mothers mourn a son, and countless Trojan girls, sisters of corpses, have shaved off their curls in grief by swirling Skamander's side. Greece, too, wails inconsolably for her Greeks; a river of tears runs for her dead; she has beaten her fists against her head and scored her fingernails in stripes across her cheeks

33

38

°

HELEN

[374-400]

till the soft skin bled. Happy Arcadian girl, who long ago shared Zeus's bed, Kallisto—you relieved your weight of woe when you were transformed to a bear with rough pelt and paws and savage glarepunishment lighter than my mother earned. Happy, too, daughter of Merops, Titan maid, whom Artemis in the days of old expelled from her chaste company—you paid your beauty's penalty by being turned into a hind with horns of gold. But mine has burned, has burned Troy's citadel and been the death of my own Greeks as well.

39

°

40

°

HELEN and the CHORUS exeunt center through the double doors of the palace, in order to consult THEONOE. MENELAOS enters right; he is in rags and presents a woebegone appearance, having corne from the seacoast. MENELAOS O grandfather Pelops, who at Pisa once won the great chariot-race with Oinomaos, would that your life had ended the same day you were served up as a banquet for the gods! Instead, revived by them, you lived to father Atreus, who in his turn, with Aerope, produced that famous couple, Agamemnon and myself, Menelaos. I consider— and I don't say this to boast—that of the Greeks I shipped the largest expeditionary force to Troy—and my authority as king owed nothing to compulsion, being based on willing obedience from the men I led. The count of those who died and those who escaped the perils of the sea and got back safely with the names of all the dead can now be reckoned exactly. I'm the exception, for ever since

34

41

°

42

°

HELEN

[401-36]

I sacked the towers of Troy I've been a miserable wanderer on the grey-green, rolling seas, longing for my own country, which, it seems, the gods think me unworthy to rejoin. I've sailed to every lonely landing-place and hostile port in Libya; every time I near my native shore gales beat me back; not once have I had the wind I need for home. And now I'm here, a wretched castaway— my comrades lost, our ship split on the rocks and smashed toflotsam—washedup on this coast. I found a floating keel, all that was left, on which in my desperate danger with great difficulty I got to land, saving Helen as well, my prize from Troy. Who the inhabitants are or what this place is called I've no idea. Out of embarrassment I avoided the crowd and so never asked, concealing my distress, ashamed at my shabby state, for when a man of high importance falls on evil times he feels it more than one inured to hardship because it's unfamiliar. I'm in fact at the end of rny tether—no food, and no clothes to cover me—as anyone can tell, what I'm wearing are torn sails saved from the wreck, for the sea has confiscated my magnificent, luxurious wardrobe. Meanwhile, having hidden the cause of all my sufferings, my wife, in the depths of a cave and charged my fellow-survivors with the task of guarding her, I've come on my own to try and scrounge provisions for my shipmates. When I saw these high, topped walls and the grand gates I thought, "Some rich man's mansion," and approached, since there's always hope in the houses of the wealthy for sailors in need; from the poor they can't get help, even though the will to give it may be there. Hallo, there! Is there a porter around to take the news of my predicament inside?

35

43

°

44

°

45

°

HELEN

[437-53]

MENELAOS has been moving toward the palace doors during the last lines of his speech. As he knocks, an OLD WOMAN, the portress, appears at the doors; she is both busy and irritable. OLD WOMAN Who's this at the door? Be off with you at once! Stop hanging about the porch and bothering my lords and masters—or you'll end up dead, for you look like a Greek, and we've no truck with Greeks.

4W

MENELAOS Well said, old lady! A fine speech! All right, I'll behave myself. Only less temper, please. OLD WOMAN Be off, I tell you. Stranger, I've strict orders not to allow any Greek inside the house. The OLD WOMAN moves threateningly toward MENELAOS. MENELAOS Look here, don't wave your arms and jostle me! OLD WOMAN It's your fault for not doing what I say. MENELAOS Go in and announce to your master that I'm here. OLD WOMAN I won't be at all popular if I do. MENELAOS As a shipwrecked foreigner I'm a protected person. OLD WOMAN Off with you now and try another house. MENELAOS speaks blusteringly. MENELAOS I shan't. I'm coming in. Do as I order. OLD WOMAN You're being a nuisance, you know. You'll get thrown out. MENELAOS Ah, where's my famous army now? I need it! 36

47

°

HELEN

[454-71]

OLD WOMAN You may have been someone elsewhere; here you're nobody. MENELAOS My soul, do we deserve this? What an insult! OLD WOMAN Tears in your eyes, eh? Who are you moaning to? MENELAOS Only the happy days I used to know. OLD WOMAN Then go and dump your tears on your old friends.

4BO

MENELAOS What country am I in? Whose palace is this? The OLD WOMAN points to Proteus' tomb. OLD WOMAN This is the house of Proteus. You're in Egypt. MENELAOS Egypt? So it's an ill wind blew me here! OLD WOMAN What have you got against our shining Nile? MENELAOS Nothing at all. It's rny own luck I'm cursing. OLD WOMAN Plenty of folk have troubles—you're not the first. MENELAOS Your king, whatever you call him—is he at home? OLD WOMAN This tomb you see is his. His son reigns now. MENELAOS Then where is he? Inside the house, or away? OLD WOMAN Not at home. And he's a hater of all Greeks. MENELAOS To what do I owe this dubious benefit? OLD WOMAN Helen, the daughter of Zeus, is here in the palace. MENELAOS What? Did I hear you rightly? Say that again.

37

49

°

HELEN

[472-502]

OLD WOMAN Tyndareus' daughter, the one who lived in Sparta. MENELAOS Where did she come from? What's the explanation? OLD WOMAN From Sparta of course—from her country to ours. MENELAOS But when? (Aside): Surely not captured from the cave? OLD WOMAN Before the Greeks went off to Troy, my friend. But make yourself scarce, for things inside the palace have taken a most upsetting turn just now. You've come at a bad time. If my royal master catches you here, your welcome will be death. I'm a friend of the Greeks more than my words let on: if I spoke harshly, it was for fear of him.

50

°

Exit OLD WOMAN into the palace. MENELAOS soliloquizes. MENELAOS I'm at a loss. What am I to think? She tells me of new disasters following in the train of the old ones. If I really seized my wife in Troy and brought her here with me and put her under guard in a cave, it must be another woman bearing the same name who's in the house. She called her the daughter of Zeus. Is there a man by the name of Zeus living beside the Nile? No, for there's one Zeus only—the one in heaven. And where else in the world can there be a Sparta except beside the reed-bright, rippling Eurotas? Tyndareus is a unique and well-known name. Can there possibly be a second Sparta and another Troy? I don't know what to make of it. But the earth's a big place, I suppose—many things must share one name, cities and women too; there's nothing strange in that. And I refuse to be frightened off by the barking of a servant. No man alive could be so uncivilized as to deny me food, especially having

38

51

°

52

°

HELEN

[503-31]

learnt who I am, for the fires of Troy are famous and so is the man who lit them—Menelaos, a name that's recognized throughout the world. I shall wait here for the master of the house. He poses me two choices: if he's savage, I'll hide, then make my way back to the wreck; if he shows signs of tenderheartedness, I'll ask for supplies to meet our needs. This, then, was the ultimate indignity for me— that I, a king myself, should have to beg food from my fellow-kings to stay alive. Still, what must be must be. It was a wise philosopher, not I, who coined the phrase, "Nothing's as strong as brute necessity."

S3

°

The CHORUS re-enters center; MENELAOS remains on stage, partly concealed by the tomb of Proteus. CHORUS Within the palace we have heard the virgin prophetess speak. Her word was unambiguous: she said that Menelaos has not gone to his grave, to the darkly glimmering cavern of the dead, but has been a wanderer, hard-driven over the heaving wave, since he left Troy with his splashing oar, never anchoring in his native haven and skirting every shore from here to the world's ends, miserable, hungry, friendless, far from friends. Re-enter HELEN center; she begins to move toward the sanctuary of the tomb. HELEN Now back to my station at the sanctuary, having heard Theonoe's welcome revelation. She knows the truth of all things, and she says that my husband is alive, lives, sees the daylight, 39

54

°-

55

°

HELEN

[532-56]

that having weathered countless passages, no novice in the school of travel, and after wandering about the world, he'll find at last the appointed end of all his sufferings—here. One thing she didn't mention: when he arrives, will he be spared? For, overjoyed at hearing that he lived, I failed to press home the question. She also said that he's escaped a shipwreck with a few friends and at this very moment is somewhere near. Dear husband, when will you come? And if you come what a void in my heart you'll fill!

m

HELEN catches sight of the crouching, semi-hidden MENELAOS and at once hurries to the tomb. Until line 591 she adopts an attitude of extreme caution. Help! Who's this man? Is this a plot, some ambush laid by the sacrilegious son of Proteus? Quick as a racehorse or a bacchanal to the tomb, with flying feet! He looks so savage I think he means to hunt me down for prey.

57

°

MENELAOS Stop! Why this desperate, frantic struggle to reach the floor and smoke-warmed pillars of the tomb? Don't run away. When you revealed your face it struck me speechless with astonishment. HELEN Friends, I arn being outraged. This man is barring my way to sanctuary. He wants to seize me and force me to accept the king's embrace. MENELAOS I'm not a bandit or a hired abductor. HELEN The clothes you're wearing, though, are ugly enough. MENELAOS Stand still. Stop darting away. Don't be afraid. HELEN Very well, I'll stand here, now I've reached the tomb.

40

58

°

HELEN

[557-78]

MENELAOS Lady, who are you? Whose face am I looking at? HELEN And who are you? Our questions are the same. MENELAOS I never in my life saw such a resemblance— HELEN You godsl For recognition is a god— MENELAOS Are you a Greek or a native of this country? HELEN A Greek. And you? I long to know as well. MENELAOS Lady, you look uncannily like Helen. HELEN And you like Menelaos. What does it mean? MENELAOS The truth. I am that most unhappy man.

59

°

HELEN O long-lost husband, come to your wife's arms! MENELAOS What do you mean—wife? Don't finger my clothes. HELEN The wife that Tyndareus, rny father, gave you. MENELAOS Torch-bearing Hekate, send me kinder visions! HELEN I am no moonlight ghost of the crossways goddess. MENELAOS No more than I am the husband of two women. HELEN Who is this other woman whose lord you are? MENELAOS The wife I brought from Troy and hid in the cave. HELEN I am your wife; you have no other queen. MENELAOS My mind is clear enough—but are my eyes? HELEN Yes; for surely you recognize your wife?

41

60

°

HELEN

[579-96]

MENELAOS You look like her, indeed I won't deny it. HELEN Whom should you trust for proof if not your eyes? MENELAOS They fail me here: I have another wife. HELEN But I never went to Troy. That was a phantom. MENELAOS Come, who on earth can make a living likeness? HELEN She was formed of air by the gods, to be your bride. MENELAOS And which god modeled her? It's past belief. HELEN Hera—in order to palm her off on Paris. MENELAOS You were here, then, and in Troy, at the same time? HELEN A name can travel where a body can't. MENELAOS Let me alone. I'd troubles enough before. HELEN Will you leave me, then, to go with your shadow-wife? MENELAOS Yes, it's farewell. Good luck, since you're like Helen. HELEN Those words destroy me. A husband found—and lost! MENELAOS The pain I felt at Troy outweighs your talk. HELEN Alas, was ever woman so unhappy? My dearest ones desert me; now I'll never find my way back to Greece and home again. Enter a MESSENGER right, one of MENELAOS' senior henchmen. He is agitated and out of breath; he intercepts MENELAOS.

42

61

°

HELEN

[597-621]

SERVANT Menelaos! I've been wandering all over this barbarous country looking for you, sent by the men you left. Finding you's been hard work,

62

°

MENELAOS What's happened? The foreigners haven't robbed you, have they? SERVANT A weird thing. But words pale beside the fact. MENELAOS Go on. This urgency must mean strange news. SERVANT The hardships you endured were all for nothing! MENELAOS You're harping on old sorrows. What's new, though? SERVANT Your wife's gone. She vanished, she was spirited out of the special cave which we were guarding into the folds of the air, some hiding-place in the sky. Before she went, she just said this: "O poor, long-suffering Trojans and all you Greeks who fought at Troy, it was because of me that you died on Skamander's banks, as Hera planned, imagining Paris had Helen in his bed, when he never did. The time's arrived for me, having done iny duty here as Fate ordained, to return to my father, the sky. I pity Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, who's heard her name baselessly slandered though she's innocent." He sees HELEN and continues rather crossly. Greetings, daughter of Leda. So you've been here? I've just reported that you'd disappeared into starry space, being quite unaware that you'd sprouted wings. Next time I shan't allow you to fool us with another trick like this: you gave your husband and his followers more than their fill of trouble over in Troy. 43

M0

M0

HELEN

[622-^5]

MENELAOS At last the answer! It all fits together— what she said was true. O dearly longed-for day that brings you to my arms, my close embrace.

6M

MENELAOS embraces HELEN; the SERVANT looks on in surprise. HELEN Menelaos, dearest of men, our time of waiting has grown grey and old, but our joy now is fresh and bright. Women, I have my husband again to cherish and to hold. After long wheelings of the sun, bringer of daily light, in a rapture I clasp my beloved one. MENELAOS And I've found you. Since we have been apart there's so much to tell between us, where shall I start?

6M

HELEN For joy the hairs on my head rise and shiver, for joy I shed tears, and for joy I wind my arms round your body fast, happy, O dearest husband, happy at last. MENELAOS O precious face, I have no fault to find: the daughter of Zeus' and Leda's bed is mine again, is mineshe whom the twin brothers who ride white horses brought me as a bride with double blessings under the shine of torches on that long-ago day. And now the god who stole you away from me and my house is leading us on to better things, and the dark times are gone. HELEN Lucky misfortune, husband, has brought us together after a long, long storm; but now that it's fair I pray to enjoy the weather. 44

67fl

HELEN

MENELAOS May you enjoy it—I repeat your prayer. With two like us, who must share, joy and sorrow cannot be separated.

[646-65]

68

°

HELEN Dear, good friends, I no longer regret the past or begrudge its misery. I have my husband, he belongs to me after the many years I waited—oh, how I waited for him to return from Troy! MENELAOS I am yours, you are mine: we have each other again. Having watched thousands of sad suns set in my delusion, only now can I guess Hera's design. But now my tears are of joy, now I have far more happiness than ever I had pain.

69

°

HELEN What can I say? Who could have ever hoped for such unhoped-for bliss— to hold you in my arms like this! MENELAOS As I hold you—you who I thought had eloped to the city of Ida, those grim, doomed towers. Tell me, by all the holy powers, how did you steal from my house that day?

70

°

HELEN A cruel question which gives me pause: you probe cruelly back to the first cause. MENELAOS Tell me, for what the gods on high give we must hear and bear below. HELEN I spit away the words I have to speak. MENELAOS But speak you must; for my sake try— there's pleasure in hearing of an ancient woe. 45

71

°

HELEN

[666-85]

HELEN I never ran away to seek that foreign prince's bed of shame, hurried away by oars, carried away by lust. MENELAOS What god or power, though, bore you like a prize from your own land? HELEN Husband, it was the son of Zeus, Hermes, who came, decoyed me and brought me to the Nile. MENELAOS Incredible! At whose command? This is a tale too wild to understand.

72

°

HELEN I have wept and wept, and my eyes are wet with tears still. The wife of Zeus destroyed me. MENELAOS Hera? But why should she bear us spite? HELEN Alas, the source of my sufferings was Ida's source—the bathing springs where the three goddesses washed their bodies bright and beauty came to trial. MENELAOS And why did the trial make Hera work you ill? HELEN Why? She robbed Paris of ...

MENELAOS Of what?

HELEN Of me, whom Aphrodite had guaranteed as his future bride.

73

MENELAOS Cruel goddess! HELEN Cruel indeed! And so she brought me to Egypt, here. MENELAOS And so, as you also told me, she supplied a phantom image to take your place. HELEN But in your house there is more, oh, more grief still. My mother . . . MENELAOS Yes? HELEN Is dead.

46

°

HELEN

[686-708]

Believing in my disgrace, with her own hands she tied the noose's knot. MENELAOS Poor woman. And what of Hermione, our child?

74

°

HELEN The imagined dishonor of my marriage-bed has left her stricken—childless and unwed. MENELAOS O Paris, you have ruined and defiled my house from roof to base; yet you yourself were killed and the bronze-armed Greeks in thousands had to die. HELEN Accursed and star-crossed, I was robbed by Hera of rny country, bereft of city and friends; above all, I lost you on the day when I left your home and bed—and all for a lie, for it was only my name, only my name that earned me an adulteress's shame.

75

°

CHORUS If only from now on you meet with luck, that will be compensation for the past. SERVANT Menelaos, let me deeper into your joy, which I glimpse but don't yet fully understand. MENELAOS By all means, old one, share the news with us. SERVANT But isn't this the lady who presided over the agony of the men at Troy? MENELAOS No. We were tricked by the gods. The Helen we seized was only a mischievous phantom made of air. SERVANT What! All that pain endured for a mere ghost? MENELAOS That was the work of Hera and her rivals.

47

76

°

HELEN

[709-38]

SERVANT And so this lady here is your real wife? MENELAOS She is. I say so; take my word for it. SERVANT Daughter, the ways of God are intricate and hard to fathom. With a curious wisdom he disarranges everything to make new patterns. Some attempt and strive and fail, others effortlessly prosper, then one day run into ruin, for no man is certain of holding fortune steady in his hands. You and your husband have had more than your share of suffering—you had to stand against a storm of words, and he a storm of spears. When he fought hard he won nothing, and yet now happiness of its own accord is his. And so you never shamed your aged father and your divine twin brothers, nor did you do what the world said you did. In my mind's eye I can see the day of your marriage, I remember waving a torch and running beside the wheels of the four yoked horses when you were a bride being charioted by your husband Menelaos from your grand house. You know, it's a bad servant who doesn't take his master's life to heart, share in his grief and celebrate his joy. Though I was born a slave, with a slave's name, my mind is my own and I should like to be ranked among the noble slaves. Far better that way than for one man to be twice handicappedhaving to obey the people round about him and to be cursed with a servile spirit too. MENELAOS Old fellow-soldier who with shield and spear have done your stint of hardship in my service and are now due for a ration of my luck, go and report to the friends I left behind our situation as you see it, the ticklish corner we're in; tell them to go to the shore 48

77

°

78

°

79

°

wo

HELEN

[739-67]

and wait in readiness for the trial of strength I can see coming, and to keep alert to find some means of rescuing my wife and escaping the barbarians, if we can, to unite our strength and fortunes once again. SERVANT It shall be done, my lord. I do now see how full of lies, how rotten the whole business of prophecy is. There never was any sense in watching sacrificial flames and listening to the cries of birds—in fact the very notion that birds help men is plain ridiculous. Kalchas, our seer, looked on while his friends died for a phantom, yet he gave the army not a word, not a sign; and the same goes for Helenos whose city it was we stormed and seized for nothing. You may reply, "God willed it otherwise." Then why do we mix with oracles? Much better to sacrifice and pray to the gods and leave prophets alone. Prophecy was invented as a bait for gullible man, but no one ever got rich without hard work by studying magic. The best prophets are care and common sense.

81

°

82

°

LEADER I heartily go along with the old man there. Whoever makes the gods his friends has more than a mere oracle inside his house. Exit SERVANT right to pass the news along to his shipmates. HELEN Well, then, so far so good. But now, my poor husband, tell me how you've survived since Troy. I may not profit by learning, but when your heart's involved you long to share the troubles of those you love. MENELAOS One single question, yet it begs a hundred. Must I describe our shipwrecks in the Aegean, the false fires Nauplios kindled in Euboia, 49

83

°

HELEN

[768-90]

the ports of Crete and Libya we put into, and Perseus' lookout rock? Were I to give you your fill of words I'd suffer in the telling the same pains I suffered once in earnest and double my sorrows by recalling them. HELEN Your answer's better than my question was. Leave all the rest, tell me just this: how long did you wander driven over the sea's back?

84

°

MENELAOS We spent ten years at Troy; add on to those seven summers and seven winters voyaging. HELEN A long, grim time for you! And you've escaped and reached here only to be faced with death! MENELAOS Death? What do you mean? You chill my blood. HELEN The master of this palace means to kill you. MENELAOS What have I done to deserve to lose my life? HELEN Your surprise arrival puts a stop to our wedding. MENELAOS What? Someone here trying to rnarry my wife? HELEN Yes, and to take me by force. I had to bear it. MENELAOS What force? His own—or has he royal power? HELEN He is the ruler here, the son of Proteus. MENELAOS So that was what the old woman at the door meant! HELEN What doors have you been knocking at in Egypt? MENELAOS points at the doors of the palace. MENELAOS These doors. And I was chased off like some beggar. 50

85

°

HELEN

[791-810]

HELEN Not asking for charity? Oh, I feel the shame! MENELAOS It amounted to that, though the word wasn't used. HELEN Evidently you know the whole story. MENELAOS I do. What I don't know is how far you've foiled them. HELEN Then learn: rny body's been kept chaste for you.

"60

MENELAOS But how can I be sure? Sweet news if true! HELEN You see this tomb, the seat of my despair? MENELAOS Yes, and a couch of straw too. What's it for? HELEN I sit there praying to escape this marriage. MENELAOS Have you no altar? Or is this their custom? HELEN I've been as safe as in our own gods' temples. MENELAOS Then can't I bring you aboard and sail for home? HELEN You'd be nearer to your grave than to my bed. MENELAOS And so the most unhappy man alive. HELEN Escape and save yourself. Don't be ashamed. MENELAOS And leave you—when I sacked Troy for your sake? HELEN Better than that my love should cause your death. MENELAOS Cowardly advice to a veteran of Troy! HELEN I suppose you want to kill the king. You couldn't. MENELAOS And why not? Is his body weapon-proof? 51

87

°

HELEN

[811-30]

HELEN You'll see. To attempt the impossible is folly. MENELAOS So I meekly hold both hands out to be bound? HELEN You're cornered. We must think up some way out. MENELAOS I'd rather be killed in action than die tamely. HELEN There's just one hope for us, a single chance.

e80

MENELAOS Persuasion? Bribery? Or a stroke of daring? HELEN If the king never learns of your arrival— MENELAOS Who's going to tell him—even know my name? HELEN He has an ally inside, with the power of a god. MENELAOS You mean some private oracle in the palace? HELEN I mean his sister, whom they call Theonoe. MENELAOS An oracular-sounding name—but what does she do? HELEN She knows all things. She'll tell her brother you're here. MENELAOS And I shall be killed. I have no way of hiding. HELEN But if we both appealed to her as suppliants— MENELAOS To do what? What hope are you leading up to? HELEN Not to inform her brother of your presence. MENELAOS If we won her over, could we get away? HELEN With her help, easily; in secret, no. MENELAOS That's your task: woman to woman's the best way. 52

89

°

HELEN

[831-56]

HELEN I'll get to her and clasp her knees, I promise. MENELAOS But wait, what if she's deaf to our appeals? HELEN You die, and I am miserably forced to marry. MENELAOS Betrayer! The word "forced" is mere excuse. HELEN No! For I've solemnly sworn by your own head—

90

°

MENELAOS Sworn what? To die? Never to swerve in love? HELEN To die by the same sword as you, and lie by you. MENELAOS To seal that pledge hold my right hand in yours. HELEN I do, and swear, if you die I die also. MENELAOS And I, if I lose you, shall take my life. HELEN How can we make an honorable ending? MENELAOS Here on this tomb. I'll kill you, then myself. But first I'll put up an almighty struggle for you and our marriage. Let who dares come near! I won't dishonor the name I won at Troy nor go back home to Greece with a great blot on my reputation. I was responsible for Thetis losing Achilles, I saw Ajax bleed on his own sword, I was there when Nestor was left without a son—am I the man, then, to count my wife not worth the price of death? Not I. If there are gods above and wise ones, they let the earth lie lightly on the brave man slain by his enemies, but the corpse of a coward they cast unburied on some barren reef. LEADER Dear Heaven, may the house of Tantalos be happy at last and freed of all its sorrows. S3

91

°

92

°

HELEN

[857-82]

The doors of the palace begin to open, in preparation for the arrival of the priestess and princess THEONOE. HELEN O endless misery! Bad luck dogs me still. Menelaos, we are trapped. Theonoe the prophetess is coming out of the house— I hear the sound of the doors being unbarred. Fly! But what good will that do? Whether she's here or somewhere else she can divine your presence. I'm in despair—I am ruined. You escaped from Troy, from one barbarian country, only to meet with other, equally savage swords.

93

°

Enter THEONOE, center, solemnly, in the robes of a priestess. She is preceded by two handmaids, one of whom carries a stemmed bowl in which a flame is visible, and the other a torch. THEONOE addresses them in turn at 932 and 935 before turning to HELEN at 940. THEONOE Lead on. Hold the bright torches up. Bring sulphur to purify the air by holy ritual that I may draw the untainted breath of heaven; and if anyone with unhallowed foot has fouled my path, be sure to purge the floor with fire, grinding the pine-torch in, so I may pass. Your holy chores completed, then take back the flame to the palace hearth from where it came. Helen, what do you think of my prophecies now? Without his ships, without his phantom wife, Menelaos manifestly stands before you. Unhappy man, to escape so many dangers only to end up here without even knowing which it's to be—sweet home or bitter Egypt. This day the assembly of the gods will argue your case in the court of Zeus. Your old foe, Hera, is now your friend and wants to bring about a safe return for you, and Helen with you, that Greece may learn how Aphrodite's gift 54

94

°

95

°

HELEN

[883-910]

to Paris was no gift, his bride no bride. But Aphrodite wants to foil your journey that the world may never know that when she purchased the beauty-prize she paid for it in false coin. It lies in my power either to destroy you, as Aphrodite hopes, by telling my brother of your arrival, or to side with Hera and save your life by keeping it dark from him— although my strict instructions were to report if you touched Egypt on your voyage home.

^

THEONOE turns to the CHORUS, but the request she makes is ignored and soon lapses. Will someone go and make known to my brother Menelaos' presence, and so assure my safety? HELEN adopts an attitude of supplication toward THEONOE, which she maintains up to line 1016. HELEN Maiden, I fall to the ground in supplication and clasp your knees, and in this humble posture, for my sake and this man's—whom at long last having won back I'm in immediate danger of losing again, to death—ask you to spare us. Now that my husband's found my loving arms, save him, I beg you, don't inform your brother. Don't sacrifice your piety to buy a bad man's gratitude with a shameful deed. God abominates violence; his commandment to all of us is: get and enjoy possessions, but not by robbery. For just as the sky belongs to all men, so too does this earth where each may fill his house with goods, so long as they are his own and not snatched from his neighbor. Although I've suffered in Egypt, in the end it's proved a blessed chance that Hermes gave me to your father to be kept safe for my husband,

55

97

°

98

°

HELEN

[911-46]

who stands here eager to reclaim his own. How can he if he's dead? And how could Proteus pay what he owes, a live woman, to a corpse? Consider the contract between man and god: wouldn't both Hermes and the dead king wish what's rightfully one man's to be given back? I know they would. You mustn't give more weight to a wild brother than an upright father. You are a seer, you believe in the godshow can you break your father's just commitment to keep the bad law of a lawless brother? Shame!—to be privy to the thoughts of Fate present and future, and not know what's wrong! You see me dogged by misery, ringed by dangerssave us, bestow this extra grace of fortune. For the whole world hates Helen. All Greece knows me as the wife who deceived her husband and eloped to live in the golden mansions of the East. But if I get back to Greece and Sparta again, if they hear and see the truth—that they were ruined by the trick of a god, that I never betrayed my loves— they'll restore me my good name: I'll see my daughter, whom no man wants now, married and enjoy the comfort and the wealth of my own house far from this hateful beggary in exile. If Menelaos had been killed abroad, I should have rendered rny service to the dead with loving tears, in his absence. But he's here and he's alive. Must he be taken from me? No, prophetess. As a suppliant I implore you, grant me this favor and in so doing follow your noble father's footsteps; for the child of a fine man can win no glory greater than matching the example of his life. LEADER The words you have spoken, and you yourself still more, arouse my pity. But how will Menelaos argue to save his life? I long to hear. 56

"°

100

°

101

°

HELEN

[947-74]

MENELAOS remains standing. MENELAOS I cannot bring myself to fall to the ground and hug your knees and let loose floods of tearssuch abject, weak behavior would disgrace the memory of Troy. And yet they say that high-born men in deep distress have wept without dishonor. All the same, I spurn this doubtful style of manhood. I choose courage. If it seems right to you to save a stranger—what's more, a man attempting to reclaim his rightful wife—then give her back to me and help us to escape. If not, it won't be the first grief I've endured, or the last either; but you will be seen to be an evil woman. What I consider my rights and my deserts I'll tell you now, adding what seems most likely to touch your heart—here, by your father's tomb.

102

°

103

°

MENELAOS turns toward the tomb of Proteus. O ancient spirit, inmate of this marble, I claim my debt from you—restore my wife whom Zeus sent here to rest in your safe-keeping. I know that, being dead, you'll lack the power to hand her over yourself, but surely your daughter will never deign to let her once great father be summoned from his grave to hear his name execrated? Now we are in her hands. Hades, lord of the underworld, you too I call upon for help. You have received hundreds of men who fell before my sword, all for this woman's sake: you have had your payment. Now give me back those warriors alive or else compel Theonoe to surpass her father's piety by giving me Helen. He turns away from the tomb and addresses THEONOE.

57

104

°

HELEN

[975-1006]

If you and your brother steal my wife from me, I'll tell you, as she failed to, what will happen. Prophetess, you should know we're bound by oath: I've vowed to fight your brother to the death, it's him or me—that's all there is to it.

1050

MENELAOS wields his sword demonstratively. If he won't meet me man to man and tries to trap and starve us in our sanctuary, I've sworn first to kill Helen and then thrust this two-edged sword into my heart on the grave-slab of Proteus here, till the gushing blood drips down; and so we'll lie, two corpses, side by side on the marble monument, to torment your conscience forever and pollute your father's name. Neither your brother nor any man alive is going to marry her—I shall take her with me, home, if I can, and if not, to the dead. But why am I saying all this? I should have won more pity by recourse to woman's tears than by this forceful speech. If you wish to, kill me— but you will not kill your shame. Far better choice to be persuaded by my arguments: then you'll act justly and I'll have my wife. LEADER Maiden, it rests with you to judge the case: judge it so that all of us here feel pleased. THEONOE By nature and vocation I love piety; I cherish myself, and I would never sully my father's name or do my brother a favor at the cost of my own dishonor. In my heart there's a great shrine of Justice: I inherit it from my grandfather Nereus, and, Menelaos, I mean to keep it holy all my life. Since Hera wants to aid you, I shall cast my vote with Hera's. As for Aphrodite

58

1060

1070

1080

HELEN

[1007-36]

(may Love not be offended!), she has never been a friend of mine, for I propose to stay a virgin to the end. The reproach you aimed at my father by this tomb hits me as well: not to repay would be wrong. Were he alive, I know he would restore you to each other. For all the world, the dead as well as the living, agrees that good and evil are rewarded. The dead may not have living minds like ours, but having once mixed with immortal ether they have immortal consciousness. Therefore, not to prolong my speech, I shall keep silence on the subject of your plea, I shall not become an accomplice to my brother's wicked folly. Indeed, however it may seem to the world, in trying to steer him from impiety to godliness I'm doing him a service. As for escape, you must find some way yourselves: I'll stand aside, aloof, and hold my tongue. Begin with the gods. First pray to Aphrodite to allow you a safe journey home, and then ask Hera to stay constant to you both in her goodwill, on which deliverance hangs. O my dead father, while there's strength in me your sacred memory shall not be profaned!

109

°

110

°

Exit THEONOE, center, with her retinue into the palace. LEADER The wicked never prosper in their ways: our hope of safety lies in doing right. HELEN We're safe as far as she's concerned, Menelaos. As for the rest, you must come up with a plan by which we can effect our joint escape. MENELAOS Then listen to me. You've been here a long time— you've grown familiar with the palace servants?

59

111

°

HELEN

[1037-62]

HELEN Why do you ask? You seem to raise the hope of doing something positive.to help us. MENELAOS Could you persuade one of the grooms in charge of the four-horse chariots to give us one? HELEN I could; but how can we escape by land over the huge, unknown Egyptian plains? MENELAOS You're right, we can't. Well, then, I'll hide in the palace and kill the king with this sword. What do you say?

112

°

HELEN Theonoe wouldn't sanction that; she'd break her silence rather than let you kill her brother. MENELAOS What's more, we haven't even got a ship for our flight. The sea has claimed the one we had. HELEN Listen—a woman can plan wisely too. Will you let me, as a ruse, report you dead? MENELAOS Ominous word! But if I'll be the gainer I'm willing to be called dead when I'm not. HELEN Good; then I'll act the woman's part, with dirges and a shaved head, for the irreligious king. MENELAOS But how will this trick help our combined escape? It's rather an old-fashioned one, you know. HELEN I'll tell him you were drowned at sea and ask him for permission to erect a monument. MENELAOS Suppose he agrees, how can we save ourselves with an empty tomb when we haven't got a ship? HELEN I'll insist on a ship, so that your robes and jewels can duly be consigned to the sea's hands.

60

113

°

HELEN

[1063-88]

MENELAOS Perfect—except for one thing: if he orders a ceremony on land, your pretext fails.

114

°

HELEN But I'll make out that it isn't the Greek custom to bury ashore those who were lost at sea. MENELAOS Another good idea. And I shall join you on board the ship to help you with the ritual. HELEN Of course you must, you above all, and with you those of your sailors who survived the wreck. MENELAOS Once I've a ship at anchor, I'll have my men embark, armed with their swords, in fighting order. HELEN You must arrange all that. I'll simply pray for favorable winds. Let the ship run!

115O

MENELAOS It shall. The gods are about to end my troubles. But who will you say told you that I was dead? HELEN You! I'll pretend you were the sole survivor of Menelaos' crew, and saw him drown. MENELAOS Yes, and these rags of sail I've got wrapped round me will lend color to your story of the wreck. HELEN They're handy now, though your clothes were a sad loss then. That ill wind could still blow us some good. MENELAOS Shall I go indoors with you, or would it be better to sit here quietly beside the tomb? HELEN Stay here. If he resorts to viciousness the tomb, as well as your own sword, will protect you. Meanwhile I'll enter the palace, cut my hair off, change this white robe for mourning black, then scratch

61

116

°

HELEN

[1089-1116]

my cheeks with my nails till the skin shows blood. For now everything hangs in the balance; the scales must tilt one way or the other, as I see it: either I die, caught out in my deception, or else we reach home, and I have saved your life. O Hera, queen of heaven, you who lie in the bed of Zeus, we two pitiful creatures lift up our hands to your star-embroidered halls and beg for a calm after our storm of troubles. And you, Dione's child, great Aphrodite, who gained the prize of beauty for the price of my false marriage, please do not destroy me. You loaded me with enough shame before, when you lent my name, not me, to an alien people. If you desire to kill me, let me die in my own land. You deal in passions, lies, crooked intrigues, love-charms, and drugs that lead to murder in families—why are you never sated with working mischief? If you could only be reasonable, there'd be no other god so sweet to mortals. I acknowledge it.

117

°

118

°

Exit HELEN, center, into the palace; the CHORUS this time remains, as does MENELAOS. CHORUS Perched among leafy tresses of olive or of oak, from deep in your melodious recesses, sweetest and saddest of birds, you I invoke. Come, nightingale, summon a note from your brown, rippling throat to match my voice as I sing of unhappy Helen's tears and the lamentable suffering of the men of Troy who faced the Grecian spears when Paris, fatally wed but favorably sped by Aphrodite, drove his intruding oar

62

119

°

HELEN

over the plains of foam, taking you, Helen, far, far from home to prove a murderous bride for all the sons of Priam who have died in war, in war. Spears were thrust, rocks were hurled, and thousands of Greeks now haunt the underworld, whose desolate wives have shorn their hair, whose widowed homes still mourn. And Nauplios, single-handed in his skiff, when he lit up with his bright beacon-fire sea-girt Euboia—star that proved a liar— wrecked many more, doom-dashed on every rock and cliff around Kaphereos on the Aegean shore. And harborless and unkind to Menelaos were the bluffs of Malea when the wind of winter drove him from Sparta with, on board, the prize of his foreign raid (oh, unrewarding rewardwar with the Greeks!), the mocking shade, the phantom Helen that Hera made. What is god, what is not god, what lies in between man and god? Who on this earth, after searching, can claim to have been to the end of that question's tortuous lane? For every man has seen the plans of the gods lurching here and there and back again in unexpected and absurd vicissitudes. O Helen, you were conceived in Leda's womb by Zeus winged like a bird, yet from the rooftops of Greece you have been proclaimed a wicked woman who deceived her husband, shamed

63

[1117-47]

1200

121

°

122

°

1230

HELEN

[1149-70]

honor, and erred against the laws of God and man. Discover who can certainty in the utterance of mankind. For myself, I find truth only in God's word. Madmen, all who seek glory in war, trusting in ignorance to the sheer weight of the lance to end mortal debate! If battle and blood are to settle the score, grief and hate will never leave the cities of men. Through strife such men have found cramped sleeping room, a Trojan burial mound, who might by words have learnt some way to compound the quarrel over Menelaos' wife— you, Helen! Now they lie in the domain of the god of death, and pouncing fire has burnt, as if Zeus had hurled his bolt, those walls to the ground, while you endure a pitiable life of pain, of pain.

124

°

125

°

Enter THEOKLYMENOS, left. He is accompanied by attendants who are carrying hunting gear; there are hounds on the leash. The retinue is speedily dispatched into the palace (at 1261-62). THEOKLYMENOS first stops at the tomb of his father, and soon notices (1271-72) that HELEN is not to be found. THEOKLYMENOS Hail, monument of my father, which I sited at my main gateway for this very purposethat, entering or leaving, I, your son, Theoklymenos might thus salute you, Proteus. You servants, take the dogs and hunting-nets inside the palace, to their proper places.

64

126

°

HELEN

[1171-98]

I've often criticized myself: I've failed, feebly, to punish criminals with death. And now I discover some Greek has landed here in broad daylight and given my scouts the slip— a spy no doubt, or somebody trying by stealth to kidnap Helen. He's a corpse as soon as he's found! Hah! It seems I've arrived too late. The plot's accomplished. There's no one here—the daughter of Tyndareus has left the tomb and been smuggled out of the country!

127

°

THEOKLYMENOS bangs on the doors of the palace; servants appear, and disappear, to do his bidding. Ho, there, unbar the doors, open the stables, bring out the chariots! My hoped-for bride shall not escape for lack of hard pursuit. Re-enter HELEN, center. But hold! The woman I was looking for hasn't got away. She's here, in the palace doorway. Helen, you've changed from white clothes into black! And why have you put iron scissors to your head and cut short your proud hair? Your cheeks are running with fresh tears—why are you weeping? Has a dream overshadowed your mind and made you sad? Or have you had heartbreaking news from home? HELEN My lord and master—as I must call you now— I'm lost. My hopes are dead, and so am I. THEOKLYMENOS What sort of trouble are you in? What's happened? HELEN My Menelaos—oh, how can I say the words?—is dead. THEOKLYMENOS Though the news gives me hope, I cannot rejoice. How do you know this? Did Theonoe tell you?

128

°

HELEN

[1199-1216]

HELEN Yes—and a witness too, who saw him die.

129

°

THEOKLYMENOS Somebody who can vouch for it—is he here? HELEN He's here; but how I wish him somewhere else! THEOKLYMENOS Who is he? Where is he now? I want the facts. HELEN There he is—there, cowering beside the tomb. HELEN points to MENELAOS who, once again, is partially concealed near the tomb and is cringing there pitiably. THEOKLYMENOS By Apollo, what a sight! The man's in rags. HELEN Alas, my husband must have looked as wretched. THEOKLYMENOS Who is this man? Where did he come here from? HELEN He's a Greek, from aboard the same ship as my husband. THEOKLYMENOS How does he say that Menelaos died? HELEN The saddest death—drowned in the deep, salt sea. THEOKLYMENOS In what wild waters was he voyaging? HELEN He was wrecked on the harborless cliffs of Libya. THEOKLYMENOS How comes it that his shipmate here survived? HELEN Sometimes the low- are luckier than the high-born. THEOKLYMENOS Where did he leave the wrecked ship before landing? HELEN Where I hope it may rot. (Half aside) Forgive me, Menelaos. THEOKLYMENOS Menelaos is dead. What boat did this fellow come in?

66

130

°

HELEN

[1217-36]

HELEN Some sailors found him and picked him up, he says. THEOKLYMENOS And the evil phantom sent in your place to Troy . . . ? HELEN The image of air? It has vanished back to air.

131

°

THEOKLYMENOS O Troy and Priam, all destroyed for nothing! HELEN I, too, shared disaster with the Trojans. THEOKLYMENOS Did he leave your husband's body unburied, or— HELEN Unburied, unburied. And I weep for that. THEOKLYMENOS So this is why you've cut your yellow curls? HELEN I loved him and still do, wherever he is. THEOKLYMENOS Should I believe you? Are these tears sincere? HELEN Would it be easy to deceive your sister? THEOKLYMENOS It wouldn't. . . . Well, is this tomb to be your home? HELEN In avoiding you I keep faith with my husband. THEOKLYMENOS Why taunt and tease me? Let the dead man be. HELEN I shall. I do. Prepare now for our wedding. THEOKLYMENOS Consent was long in coming, but I'm glad. HELEN Do you know what we ought to do? Forget the past. THEOKLYMENOS On what terms? For one gift deserves another. HELEN Let us conclude a truce. Give me your friendship. THEOKLYMENOS I hereby consign our quarrel to the winds.

67

132

°

HELEN

[1237-53]

HELEN Since you're my friend, I fall at your feet and beg— HELEN falls to her knees. THEOKLYMENOS What do you beg, as a suppliant on your knees? HELEN I wish to ...

may I bury my dead husband?

133

°

THEOKLYMENOS What, a grave without a corpse? Bury a shadow? HELEN In Greece, when a man is lost at sea, the custom— THEOKLYMENOS Yes? Pelops' people are expert in these matters. HELEN Is to perform the rites with an empty shroud. THEOKLYMENOS Give him a tomb by all means. Choose a site. HELEN That's not our way of burying the drowned. THEOKLYMENOS What is, then? I'm quite ignorant of your customs. HELEN We take the gifts we owe them out to sea. THEOKLYMENOS How can I help? What do you need for the dead? MENEI.AOS stands up and prepares to take part in the dialogue. HELEN This man knows, I don't—I've been lucky till now. THEOKLYMENOS Well, stranger, you have brought me news that's welcome. MENELAOS Not welcome to me—nor to the dead man either. THEOKLYMENOS But tell me: how do you bury those that are drowned? MENELAOS It all depends how rich or poor they are. 68

134

°

HELEN

[1254-73]

THEOKLYMENOS For Helen's sake no expense shall be spared. MENELAOS First we offer the powers below some blood. THEOKLYMENOS Which animal's? Tell me and I shall oblige. MENELAOS You choose. Whatever you provide will do. THEOKLYMENOS In Egypt a horse or bull is customary. MENELAOS Make sure, though, that the beast you offer is flawless.

135

°

THEOKLYMENOS We have plenty of those among our splendid herds. MENELAOS We need a bier, too, for the absent body. THEOKLYMENOS You shall be given it. What else should one supply? MENELAOS Bronze arms and armor: he was war's companion. THEOKLYMENOS Panoply fit for a Greek king—I'll provide them. MENELAOS And fruit and flowers, whatever your soil produces. THEOKLYMENOS And then? How do you give all this to the sea? MENELAOS There has to be a boat, and rowers too. THEOKLYMENOS And how far from the land does it have to go? MENELAOS Till the foam of the oars is hardly visible. THEOKLYMENOS Why? What's the purpose of this strange Greek ritual? MENELAOS To avoid foul blood being washed back to the shore. THEOKLYMENOS A fast Phoenician vessel's at your disposal. MENELAOS That's kind of you—and kind to Menelaos. 69

136

°

HELEN

[1274-1300]

THEOKLYMENOS But can't you manage this? Do you need her help? MENELAOS His mother, wife, or child must see it done. THEOKLYMENOS You mean, this burial is her painful duty? MENELAOS To cheat the dead of their due offends the gods. THEOKLYMENOS She may go, then. I would wish my wife to be pious. Enter the palace, select your gifts for the dead; I shall not send you from Egypt empty-handed if you help Helen. You have brought me heartening news: in place of these rags—for I note your sorry state— you shall have food and clothes for your passage home. And you, unhappy Helen, don't weary yourself with useless tears. Menelaos has met his doom. Crying won't bring your husband back to life. MENELAOS You know your task now, lady. You must show love to the husband you have and let the other go. Things being as they are, it's your best course. If I manage to get safely back to Greece, I'll kill the old slanders about you. Only be the true wife to your husband that you should be. HELEN I shall; and you will be close enough to see that my lord will have no reason for complaint. But now, poor man, go indoors, take a bath and change your clothes. You won't have long to wait for your reward—for you'll be that much keener to serve my dearest Menelaos, knowing that I am ready to give you what I owe you. Exeunt HELEN, MENELAOS, and THEOKLYMENOS, center, all into the palace. There is a pause in the action while the CHORUS sings a long ode.

70

137

°

138

°

139

°

HELEN

CHORUS Long ago the Mountain Mother of the gods ran to and fro on frantic feet, combing the forest glades, the brooks and rivers and cascades, even the waves of the thunder-throated sea, anguish-wild, to find her stolen child whose unutterable name is mystery. Shrilly clamored the bronze, sonorous cymbals when the goddess yoked her lion-drawn car in search of Persephone, the maid ravished from the circles of the dancing-chorus; and whirlwind-footed to her aid rushed Artemis with her arrows of war, Athene with her spear and Gorgon's eyes. But watching from his throne in the skies, Zeus ordained things otherwise. When the Great Mother ceased her hard, sore-footed, world-wandering quest for her daughter and her daughter's cunning thief, she climbed Mount Ida, she crossed the snow-blooming crest where the upland nymphs keep guard, threw herself down among the winter-white, rock-strewn thickets, and in her grief unleashed a universal blight. She .scorched the ungreen fields, starving men of the yields of each expected crop; to injure the flocks she dried the juicy fodder of the curling leaf; through her, the child in the womb died, life in the cities came to a stop, gods were denied their rites, and altars their burnt offerings; at source she choked the springs of their jetting, shining water—

71

[1301-36]

140

°

141

°

142

°

HELEN

[1337-68]

all in bitter, insufferable grief for her lost daughter. But then, when she had brought to a halt the feasts that men share with the gods, Zeus, to assuage her black, impassioned sense of wrong, spoke out: "Demeter is savage with rage for her lost child. Go, sacred Graces, go, Muses, and with your art, with the shock of music, with dance and with song shift the mood of her heart." The first of the immortals then to come was the loveliest. Aphrodite seized the rumbling, bronze-voiced cymbal and the hidestretched drum, and the Mother smiled and took the flute in her hands and, beguiled by its deep, loud throb, was eased. Helen, you did not do right, you committed a sin: in your chamber you lit an unholy flame and, child, you failed to honor the name of the Great Mother, and she avenged the slight. For great is the power of the dappled skin of the fawn which her worshippers wear, of the vivid green of the ivy wreath on the sacred wand they bear, of the frenzied tambourine whirled and brandished high in the air, of the wild tossed hair which her reveling devotees shake, of their nights spent rapt and awake . . . Your beauty, Helen, was all you gloried in. Re-enter HELEN, center.

72

143

°

144

°

145

°

HELEN

[1369-93]

HELEN Friends, things have gone well for us in the palace. The daughter of Proteus, questioned by her brother, acted her part in our plot and said not a word about my husband's presence; indeed, to help me, she said he was dead, out of the sunlight, buried. Meanwhile my lord has made a lucky haul: the arms that he was supposed to sink in the sea he's wearing himself, his strong left arm in the shield-band, his right hand with a spear, to all appearance as if he were about to play his role in the burial ceremony.

146

°

147

°

Re-enter MENELAOS, center. He has shed his rags and now stands in the panoply of fhe warrior he is about once again to become. So here he comes, conveniently armed, spoiling for battle like a man who means to hang victorious trophies over the corpses of a thousand Egyptians the moment we get aboard and use our oars. 1 myself, in place of those rags from the wreck, have given him new clothes as well as the bath his body had long craved, in sweet, fresh water. But look! Here is the prince who thinks he holds my instant marriage in the palm of his hand. I must be silent. I beg you, be my friends and guard your tongues; and then, if we escape, one day we may contrive to save you too. Re-enter THEOKLYMENOS, center, again attended by a retinue of slaves bearing gifts for the "funeral," who however mostly immediately leave the stage to the right. THEOKLYMENOS To your work, men. Do as the stranger tells you and take the funeral offerings to the shore. Helen—don't take these words amiss—stay here, be ruled by me. Whether or not you're present 73

148

°

HELEN

[1394-1417]

at the rite, you honor your husband just the same. My fear is that, driven mad by memories of love, in a fit of passionate devotion you'll throw yourself in the sea; for the grief you show for a man who's dead elsewhere is too intense. HELEN My new-found husband, I am duty-bound to revere the memory, the intimacy of my first marriage. I've loved Menelaos so much that I could die with him—but then what benefit would my death bring him in death? No, let me go in person and offer the gifts due to the departed. May the gods reward you— and this stranger too, since he's been helping us— with all I could wish for you both. And for your kindness to me and to Menelaos you shall find me exactly the sort of wife that you deserve; for all that's happening points to a good end. Now, please give someone orders to put a ship at our disposal for the funeral rite, and then my gratitude will be complete.

149

°

150

°

THEOKLYMENOS turns to an attendant. THEOKLYMENOS You there, go and get ready a fifty-oared Sidonian galley with a crew of rowers! HELEN points tO MENELAOS.

HELEN This stranger will be in charge of the sea-burial— won't he have command of the ship as well? THEOKLYMENOS He will indeed; my sailors must obey him. HELEN Repeat that, so that it's clearly understood. THEOKLYMENOS They must obey him. Shall I say it a third time? 74

151

°

HELEN

[1418-40]

HELEN Blessings upon your hopes—and my hopes too! THEOKLYMENOS Don't spoil your beauty now with too much crying. HELEN Today will show how grateful to you I am. THEOKLYMENOS The dead are nothing; tears are wasted effort. HELEN I'm thinking of this world as well as the other. THEOKLYMENOS You will find me as good a man as Menelaos. HELEN You have been good. Now all I need is luck.

152

°

THEOKLYMENOS That lies with you. Be friends with me, you'll have it. HELEN I don't need to be taught how to love my friends. THEOKLYMENOS Shall I help you by accompanying you myself? HELEN No, sire. A king should never serve his servants. THEOKLYMENOS Very well. I need not bother myself further with your Greek ceremonies. My house is cleanit wasn't here that Menelaos died. Go, one of you, and tell all my chief subjects to bring their wedding-gifts inside the palace. Let the land ring with music and with songs in celebration, in congratulation of the marriage between Helen and myself. Meanwhile, stranger, put all this in the hands of the sea, in honor of her former husband, then hurry back again, bringing my wife, and share in our wedding banquet; after which either sail home or stay here at your pleasure. Exit THEOKLYMENOS center into the palace.

75

153

°

HELEN

[1441-76]

MENELAOS O Zeus, known as our father, wisest of gods, look down on us, grant us respite from pain. As we drag our difficulties up the slope reach us your hand—one touch of your fingertip and we're there, at the summit, where we hope to be. I've done my share of suffering in the past You gods, I've called upon you many times in tones that may have pleased you or displeased you, and I don't deserve to spend my whole life staggering under catastrophe, I ought to be able to walk upright. Indulge my prayer this once and I shall live a happy man forever.

154

°

Exeunt HELEN and MENELAOS right, toward the waiting ship. CHORUS Speed home, speed home, galley of Sidon, mother of oars loved by the foam, dance-leader when the dolphins revel and the winds are fair and the waves lie level. May Galaneia, goddess of calms, the sea's grey-green daughter, speak words like these: "Spread the sails wide to the salt breeze, sailors, tug at the oars, tug at the oars till you have grounded the ship, with Helen, on kind Greek shores, in the city that Perseus founded." There, Helen, you may meet your brothers' wives beside the swirling water of Eurotas; you may come in time to join the dance before Athene's temple, or to share the night of joy when Spartans celebrate the boy whom, challenged to compete, Apollo killed with the discus by mischance, and for whose sake the son of Zeus proclaimed throughout the land a day of revelry and sacrificial slaughter; and the child you left when you went away, 76

155

°

156

°

157

°

HELEN

[1477-1511]

for whom no bridal torch has ever flamed— you may see her, Hermione, your daughter. Oh, to have wings! Our prayer is to be high in the air over Libya with the flocks who escape the rains of winter and in close ranks follow the eldest, the captain bird, whose clear whistle, always heard, leads them over the deserts and the corn-green plains. O long-necked voyagers, O cranes, who partner the clouds in their sky-races, travel through the starry spaces, under the Pleiads at their zenith, under Orion burning in the middle of the night, and when you reach the banks of Eurotas, alight and trumpet the tidings of joythat Menelaos has taken the city of Troy, that Menelaos is returning. Come with the speed of your horses, O sons of Tyndareus, sky-inhabiting pair, rush through the air, under the glittering, whirling courses of the stars; champions of Helen, ride over the grey-green swell of the tide, over the dark-skinned backs of the waves and the white jags of foam, bringing the fresh and welcome wind that comes from Zeus and takes the sailor home; banish the cloud of ill-fame that has shadowed your sister ever since men's tongues coupled her name in scandal with a foreign prince; dissolve the guilt she has borne as punishment for the quarrel on Ida, even though she never went to Troy and never saw the towers Apollo built. 77

158

°

159

°

160

°

HELEN

[1512-37]

Enter THEOKLYMENOS center from the palace, as a MESSENGER bursts in right, from the shore. Before THEOKLYMENOS can speak, the agitated MESSENGER bursts into breathless speech. MESSENGER My lord, the news I'm just about to tell you is utterly unexpected—and disastrous.

161

°

THEOKLYMENOS What is it? MESSENGER You may as well start looking for a new bride. Helen has left the country. THEOKLYMENOS Left! On wings, I suppose? Or did she walk? MESSENGER She was carried off in a ship by Menelaos— the man who brought the report of his own death. THEOKLYMENOS This is appalling news. What sort of transport did they get away in? It's unbelievable! MESSENGER The transport you supplied him with. In short, he went off with your sailors in your ship. THEOKLYMENOS How? I want to know how! For it surpasses the bounds of my belief that a lone man could outwit a whole crew—and you were one of them! MESSENGER When the daughter of Zeus had left this royal house and was being escorted seawards, she adopted a graceful, mincing walk—it was clever acting— and set up a widow's wailing for the husband who, far from being dead, was right beside her. At last we reached your dockyard and hauled down a brand-new, fifty-oared Sidonian galley complete with benches. Each man did his job: one fitted the mast in position, one arranged the oars, one furled the white sails, and the steersman lowered the rudders by the guiding-ropes. While all this work was going on, some Greeks,

78

162

°

163

°

HELEN

[1538-73]

sailors of Menelaos—they must have been watching and biding their time—approached the shore: fine-looking men, but dirty and disheveled, wearing the rags of castaways. Seeing them, the son of Atreus put on for our benefit a show of commiseration. "Men," he called, "you have my sympathy. You look like Greeks. What ship? How were you wrecked? Since you've arrived, would you be willing to help in the burial of Menelaos, lost at sea, whom Helen— this lady here—is honoring with a tomb?" Next thing, they'd shed some hypocritical tears and come on board, carrying the sea-gifts for Menelaos. Now we got suspicious and muttered to one another about the crowd of extra passengers, but all the same, remembering your orders, we kept quiet: your guest was to be in absolute command, you'd said—the whole disaster's due to that. Anyway, the cargo being fairly light, we easily hauled it aboard—but not the bull, who pawed and slithered and balked at the straight gangplank, bellowed and rolled his eyes and humped his back and squinted down his horns and wouldn't allow anyone to touch him. At which Helen's husband shouted, "Takers of Troy, come on, why can't you lift up the bull the Greek way, on strong shoulders, and carry him for'ard? He's our sacrifice." And he drew his sword. They obeyed. They seized, hoisted, and manhandled the bull onto the deck. At last, when the ship had taken on all cargo and Helen with her dainty feet had mounted every rung of the ladder, she sat down on the quarter-deck, with her so-called "dead" husband. The rest of the Greeks ranged themselves, two in a row,

79

164

°

165

°

166

°

HELEN

[1574-1611]

on either side along the bulkheads, hiding swords under their clothes; and soon the waves echoed as we took up the bosun's chant. When we'd got out to sea—not too far out, yet not too near the shore—our steersman asked, "Shall we keep going, sir, or will this do? You're in command here." Menelaos answered, "This is far enough," and, taking his sword in hand, worked his way to the prow, stood poised to strike, then without mention of any dead man's name cut the bull's throat, with a prayer: "Lord of the ocean, Poseidon, and you stainless Nereids, convey me safely, and my wife with me, away from Egypt to the shores of Nauplia." A stream of blood jetted into the water— a good omen for the Greek. Then one of us spoke up and said, "There's treachery aboard! Let's make for the shore. Row about to the right! Put the helm over, someone!" The son of Atreus, standing there after slaughtering the bull, yelled to his men, "What are you waiting for, heroes of Greece? Kill these Egyptian dogs, cut them to bits and throw them in the sea!" In reply our captain roared out to your sailors, "Come on! Find weapons, grab the end of a spar, break up a seat, wrench an oar out of the rowlocks and smash the heads of these accursed strangers!" Every man sprang to his feet, we with nothing but timber from the ship, they with their swords. Soon the decks were awash with blood, while Helen shouted encouragement from the stern: "Where now is the reputation that you won at Troy? Show these barbarians!" It happened quickly: some fell, some kept their feet, and you could see dead men lying all round. Be,ing fully armed, Menelaos, wherever he saw his friends hard-pressed, brought his sword-arm into play. In the end he swept the benches clear of rowers, went to the rudder and ordered the helmsman to steer straight for Greece. 80

167

°

168

°

169

°

170

°

HELEN

[1612-34]

They hoisted sail, and the wind blew in their favor. And so they've escaped from Egypt. I myself avoided death by climbing down the anchor into the sea. I was half-dead when a fisherman picked me up and brought me ashore; and so I give you the news. Healthy mistrust, I've learnt, is the quality that stands one in best stead.

171

°

LEADER I would never have dreamt, my lord, that Menelaos could have been here unknown to you and me. Exit MESSENGER, Tight.

THEOKLYMENOS Shame and misery, to be outwitted by a woman! My bride has escaped. If pursuit could overhaul them, I'd spare no effort, I'd soon seize those Greeks. As it is, I'll take revenge on my treacherous sister, who saw Menelaos in the house and said nothing. Never again will she cheat men with her prophecies!

172C

THEOKLYMENOS starts toward the palace, but the CHORUS stands in his way. LEADER Where are you going, my lord? To commit a murder? THEOKLYMENOS Where justice beckons me. Out of my way! CHORUS A hasty, terrible crime! We clutch your robes. THEOKLYMENOS Does a slave command his master? LEADER We are right. THEOKLYMENOS But you do me wrong. Unless you let me—LEADER No! THEOKLYMENOS Kill my vile sister—LEADER God-fearing, not vile. THEOKLYMENOS Who betrayed me—LEADER Noble betrayal! A good deed! THEOKLYMENOS And gave my bride to a man—LEADER Who had first claim. 81

173

°

HELEN

[1635-62]

THEOKLYMENOS Over what's mine? LEADER Her father gave her to him. THEOKLYMENOS Fortune gave her to me. LEADER And Fate removed her. THEOKLYMENOS You're not my judge. LEADER I am, if I judge better. THEOKLYMENOS So I'm overruled as king? LEADER Not when you're just. THEOKLYMENOS You seem in love with dying. LEADER Kill me, then. While we stand here you shall not kill your sister. Kill me! The noblest thing a slave can do is die with honor for the sake of his master. The DIOSKOUROI, KASTOR and POLYDEUKES, appear in the air above the palace, swung forward by the mechane, a kind of crane fixed to the top of the stage buildings; in this case, they may have been represented as riding on horses. KASTOR alone speaks. KASTOR Theoklymenos, King of Egypt, moderate your wrath: it is wrongly aimed. We who address you are the Heavenly Twins, whom Leda once gave birth to with Helen, who has now fled your house. The lost marriage at which you rage was never destined to be, nor did Theonoe, the Nereid's daughter, wrong you when she honored the command of both her father and the gods. Until this day it had always been ordained that she should live in your palace; but once Troy's foundations were uprooted, she was meant to return home and share her husband's roof. So sheathe that black sword pointed at your sister, and own that what she did was wisely done. We who were given the power of gods by Zeus would have rescued her long ago had we not been weaker than Destiny and the other gods, who both alike willed that these things should be. Those words were for you. Now I shall speak to Helen. 82

174

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175

°

HELEN

[1663-92]

Sail with your husband; you shall have fair winds; we, your brothers, the Guardians, will escort you, skimming the waves on our horses. And one day, when you complete the course of human life, you shall be called divine along with us, share our libations and be entertained, like the Dioskouroi, with feasts and worship from the race of men. For that is Zeus's will. Where Hermes, when he snatched you up from Sparta, marked the first stage of your skyborne flight and hid you to foil your marriage to Paris—I mean the island that sits like a sentinel opposite Attica— shall be known by the world as Helen, for its part in sheltering your god-abducted beauty. And the gods have granted wandering Menelaos life after death in the Islands of the Blest. Heaven never hates the high-born, but it's true, they're given more trials than the nameless crowd. THEOKLYMENOS O sons of Zeus and Leda, I abandon my old quarrel with you over your sister. If it's the will of the gods, let her go home. Theonoe I spare. I recognize, and you should know, that you are both blood-brothers of the best, most virtuous sister in the world. Rejoice, therefore, in Helen's noble mindthere are few women like her—and farewell. CHORUS The divine will shows itself in many forms. The gods dispose many things unexpectedly, and what we base certainty on may never take place. God finds a way for the event no man foreknows. So ends our play. Exeunt omnes: THEOKLYMENOS and the CHORUS retire into the palace as the DIOSKOUROI are swung back and out of sight by the mechane. 83

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1780

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NOTES A N D G L O S S A R Y

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NOTES

As noted in the Introduction, we have in general followed the text of G. Murray (Oxford, 1913), as used and sometimes altered or improved by A. M. Dale in her commentary (Oxford, 1967). In the case of significant divergences, brief comments will be found in these notes. The notes do not, of course, constitute anything like a commentary. They mainly attempt to explain some points of difficulty or obscurity (textual or contextual); to draw attention to some matters of dramatic technique and stagecraft; and to show how Euripides constantly harps on the appearance/reality theme. FAMILY TREES

1.

Pontos Nereus Proteus == Psamathe Theoklymenos Theonoe

2.

Tantalos Oinomaos I I Pelops = Hippodameia

Thyestes

Atreus = Aerope

Aegisthos = Clytemnestra = Agamemnon Menelaos = Helen Orestes

87

=

Hermione

NOTES

3.

Thestios Leda = Tyndareus or Zeus Kastor

4

Pollux

Clytemnestra

Helen

Zeus Dardanos I. Priam = Hecuba

Paris

c.

Helenos

Danaos I Akrisios

Danae — Zeus Perseus = Andromeda

6.

Poseidon I Neleus I Nestor

Antilochos

7.

88

Psamathe = Aiakos

Nereus

Phokbs Telamon

Peleus = Thetis

Ajax

Achilles

Teucer

NOTES 1-172 Prologue The situation, with Helen standing or sitting by the tomb of Proteus, is similar to that with which Andromache opens, where the heroine has taken refuge at a shrine of Thetis. Necessary as the prologue was at a time when, of course, there was no playbill or program (and this is especially true in a play such as Helen, where the author treats the myth in a decidedly unorthodox way, with a consequently greater need for explanation to the audience), Teucer is a somewhat unsatisfactory figure, dramatically speaking. He appears from nowhere, disappears into the same nowhere, and is not heard of again. 18 There's an old story Already the note of scepticism appears; the distinction between appearance and reality, so crucial and central to this play, is made over two dozen times in the course of it. 26 Mount Ida

Of course, the Trojan Ida rather than the perhaps better-known Cretan one.

j6ff. not the real me ... possesses only his belief These are the bones of the story as told by Stesichorus; for a full and clear account, see Dale, Introduction, pp. xvii ff. The word for belief, dokesis, is not a common one and may have something of a philosophical flavor. 4iff. relieve the cumbered earth The account of overpopulation as the cause of the Trojan War goes back a long way—in fact to the Cypria, ascribed to Stasinus, Euripides, ever the rationalist, seems to have favored it: he refers to it both in Orestes and Electra. The mightiest Greek (43) is Achilles. 94ff. No wonder, then The dialogue, in stichornythia, is confused and almost certainly corrupt between here and 96. It may be that a line has fallen out and been clumsily replaced; we have omitted one line which is almost certainly an interpolation (86 in Murray's text). 107 one of Helen's suitors Although this is inconsistent with the general version of the legend, it is not absolutely novel and gives an excuse for Helen's knowing of Achilles—which would otherwise be inexplicable, given her seventeen years' isolation in Egypt. no Another man Odysseus; see, e.g., Sophocles' Ajax, passim.

89

NOTES

127 the gods made you imagine it all Again, Euripides uses the word doke~sis; again we see the emphasis on appearance and reality. 129 We have omitted, with Dale, the two preceding lines (12 if. in the Greek text), as being redundant and obscure. 144 two different rumors And yet again Euripides cannot resist casting doubt as to what is real, what false. 152 Theonoe

We must assume that her fame is indeed widespread for Teucer to know of her.

171 home Euripides puts it more vividly ("to the streams of Eurotas") from the point of view of his—but not a present-day—audience. 173-270 The first lyric passage, with two strophes and antistrophes followed (244-70) by an epode; as prelude, Helen chants three dactylic lines (173-79 in this translation). The meter, in Greek, is mainly trochaic. Although the text (as all too often in the choruses of the Helen) is frequently unclear or corrupt, the sense can normally be ascertained with confidence—which cannot always be said. 181 you Sirens

Why Sirens? The Sirens are represented in art as winged (women with birds' wings, or birds with human heads), and regularly have a connexion with death: their images were often carved on tombs, and they may even have been painted here on the tomb of Proteus.

i93ff. By the blue pool This passage (or parodos, marking the entry of the Chorus) inevitably recalls the more famous "laundry" scene at Hippolytus (121-30). 210 my ill-used name The familiar appearance/reality contrast is brought out , even in a choric ode, where it might seem especially inappropriate. 238f a rumor . . . that implies you sleep

But how could the Chorus know this? Here and elsewhere Euripides is less than careful about what, in the given circumstances, could be known by whom—as, on occasion, things are not known which, since Theonoe is omniscient, really ought to be known. Of course, too much should not be made of this.

90

NOTES 243 Athene's brazen temple It is worth pointing out that this is the Spartan Athene, whose temple was lined with bronze plates; there is a description in Pausanias (3.17.2,3). 270 in name Yet again Helen drives the point home. 271-403 The second scene, between Helen and the Chorus. 274 We omit lines 257-59 oftheofGreek text, with Murray and against Dale, as being "tastelessly grotesque"; but we recognize that, in this play, it is not impossible that Euripides wrote what he is alleged to have done. 299):. My daughter . . . withers in spinsterhood Hermione is meant; the exaggeration—Hermione is perhaps nineteen or twenty—is pardonable. 314 Here again we have omitted several lines (299-302 in the Greek) with Murray and Dale; they are silly, tasteless, and questionable Greek—a combination infrequently if ever found in Euripides. 32if. So we translate; but the Greek as transmitted is highly complex and compressed. While the general sense seems clear enough, we suspect corruption. See Dale, ad loc. (Greek text, 308-10) 335 Yet again we have omitted (with Dale but against Murray) three lines of the Greek (324-26): "impossible to construe and wholly superfluous" (Dale). 339 At this point, Helen breaks into a lyric dialogue, or kommos, with the Chorus, which is followed by a solo lament (373), itself leading into (390) a complex and corrupt passage in a dactylic meter. 365 The Greek at this point (353ff.) is implausible and probably corrupt; see Dale ad loc. But the sense, once again, is clear: various methods of suicide (hanging, cutting one's throat) are, not for the first time, being considered. 370 Priam's boy Paris. 392 The line of thought here is that other women whose beauty brought them low (Kallisto and the daughter of Merops) were relatively fortunate

91

NOTES

compared to Helen, whose beauty destroyed not only her but the Greeks and Trojans as well. But, once again, the Greek as transmitted is at best confused and several readings are doubtful. For example, the reference to Leda in 395 seems irrelevant; while the text implies, too, that Kallisto was transformed into a lion rather than a bear (as is invariably stated elsewhere). The daughter of Merops is unknown; animal metamorphoses are a common thread—but do not apply to Helen. Incongruous as the stanza appears to us, "certainly Euripides," as Dale says, "intends no burlesque here." For another interpretation, see Dale, Classical Review (New Series) x (1960), 194-95: lioness = beast generically. 404-538 The third scene: Menelaos and the Portress. This scene and the following one, with the great hero in rags and being rudely rebuffed by, of all people, a portress, were among those which did no good to Euripides' reputation—at least in the eyes of Aristophanes. It is worth comparing the parody, considerable in length and quoting in extenso from Helen, which appeared the following year in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae: see 849-918. 462 loot like a Greek

But how does she know?

507-21 Bemused reflections on his predicament and the possibility of coincidence—what, a second Helen, Zeus, Sparta, Tyndareus, Troy? The impression is one of naivete and bewilderment—with a degree of blustering recovery of confidence in 52iff. 539-922 The fourth scene, extended to the length of an "act" (of course, the Greeks did not think in those terms, nor did time pass between scenes or "acts" as it may well do in a modern play). For a superlative account of how the Greeks handled stagecraft, see The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, by Oliver Taplin (Oxford, 1977), or, more accessibly, the same author's Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978). This act, including the standard recognition (anagnorisis) scene, is of course one of the central sections of the play. We have Menelaos, Helen, a Messenger, and the Chorus. 539-50 Essential reportage by the Chorus—not a full-scale choric ode.

92

NOTES

553 knows the truth of all things In that case, there is a lot that, she has not passed on to Helen! 586 This line does not appear in the manuscripts of Euripides, but is supplied— essentially—from the parody in Thesmophoriazusae. 592ff. Menelaos' bewilderment, remember, is understandable. He has absolutely no reason to believe that this person is the "real" Helen. 601 We omit two otiose lines (following Dale) after this line. 611 A name The familiar onoma-soma dichotomy. 615ff. An unexpected end, it seems, to a recognition scene! But help is on the way, via what A. Pippin Burnett has usefully called a "manipulated revelation, so different from an internally necessary discovery of the truth." (Catastrophe Survived, Oxford, 1971, p. 84.) 641 So you've been here The Servant is understandably annoyed at what he takes for a trick. 651-753 The Recognition Duet is composed in a mixture of meters, including standard iambic trimeters; trimeters are mainly given to the male, lyric meters to the (more emotional) female. The main problem in this scene lies in the ascription of lines to the right speaker; see, especially, G. Zuntz, Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, 1965), chapters 4 and 5. Certainty is, as so often, unattainable, and agreement has not yet been reached. We offer our version with no more than moderate conviction that it approaches what Euripides wrote, and, in particular, draw attention to Anne Pippin Burnett's version of 676ff.: MENELAOS But this splendid disaster has brought me to you—a tardy husband, indeed, but all the same, I mean to enjoy my luck! HELEN Do, by all means! I pray for the same thing that you do; it would be wrong, in a married pair, for one to suffer when the other was content.

(Catastrophe Survived, p. 85) Burnett's view is that this is an "erotic sous-entendu."

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NOTES

655 Taplin (Greek Tragedy in Action, p. 72) well comments: Recognition scenes naturally culminate in the heartwarming embrace of the long-separated kin, and in Greek tragedy this is usually the cue for a lyric duet which squeezes the last tear from this favourite episode. But before this satisfaction is allowed the recognition is often long delayed by incredulity, misunderstanding, the production of proof and so on. The plays where the embrace is most skilfully delayed and the longing for reunion most tantalizingly drawn out are probably Euripides' Iphigenia (among the Taurians) and Helen. 679 Whether Helen or Menelaos should be speaking here, it is at least clear that we should not (as Murray does) attribute the lines to the Chorus. 754 The action resumes. 767 Note the homely thoughts, the limited perspectives of the stunned but loyal servant—and his more telling remarks which will follow shortly. 803-5 The Greek as transmitted contains some hopelessly otiose material; we have omitted, with J. Jackson (Marginalia Scaenica, Oxford, 1955, p. 240) part of lines 741-42 of the Greek text. 8o6ff. Why this sudden attack by the Servant on the art of prophecy? Most obviously, because Euripides wished to lash out at divination and the important part it had been playing in the contemporary scene— especially before and during the Sicilian Expedition (Thucydides, viii. i). Dale points out that Euripides attacks divination elsewhere (Elecrra, Phoenissae, Bacchae, the two Iphigeneias) in unvarying tones of hostility and contempt. More particularly, here, we may feel (with Burnett, op. cit., p. 87) that these are reflections on the result of the gods' deceit as the first fact of one's universe. In that case, prophecy will not help—rather, lead your life according to the most sensible rules of mortal men. "Which is not to say that Euripides was not riding a favorite hobby horse at a time when his views would be likely to command exceptionally widespread consent. 826 With the end of the Recognition Scene, the action moves on toward the Intrigue (843ff.). 832 As a result of the treacherous murder of Palamedes at Troy, his father Nauplios had lit misleading beacons in revenge on a promontory of Euboia

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in order to lure the Greek ships to destruction. Plays were written on this subject by both Euripides and Sophocles, but neither survives. 834 Perseus' look-out rock According to Herodotus (ii. 15) this place marks the western limit of the Nile Delta, corresponding to the modern Aboukir. Here Andromeda was chained to her rock. 887 An oracular-sounding name Because Theonoe (see 13 ff.) means, roughly, "knowing divine designs." 914-15 when Nestor/was left without a son The death of Antilochos is meant, cf. Odyssey 4.187. 932-1185 The fifth "act" or scene: the nomenclature is irrelevant, but this is the central and crucial hinge of the play, on which all else depends. The presence of Theonoe lifts the action to a new plane of seriousness, and Theonoe's speeches are composed in a Greek altogether more elevated than is the case elsewhere in the play. Theonoe's character and language stand in sharp relief to those of the other dramatis personae; here at least, and at last, there is no sense of the comic or burlesque. Nor does Aristophanes ever quote from her. 946 This day the assembly of the gods She is indeed well informed; the implication of Dale's note ad loc. (Greek 878f is that Euripides was, consciously or unconsciously, transferring the scene in the epic mode to Olympus, where it would all be described in oratio recta and in full. g63ff. In the more usual version of what follows, the arbiter would be asked to consider his or her verdict on two different and opposing pleas. Here, of course, two people plead for the same decision, but in two wholly different ways. 1014 The words you have spoken Who speaks these words? The problem is a delicate one. Murray gives them to the Chorus; Pearson (C.U.P., 1903) similarly. Dale (at line 945 in the Greek) follows the manuscript tradition in giving them to Theonoe. This divergence highlights one of the difficulties facing modern editors or translators of Greek dramatists: who is speaking at a given moment? (Our manuscript traditions of who is speaking are the result of later scholar95

NOTES

ship. Papyrus discoveries show that scribes normally marked changes of speaker only by a paragraphos (—) or dikolon (:), both of which are sigla easily omitted.) In a case like this, it has to be asked how far back our tradition extends; and ultimately we have nothing better to go on than our own sense of the fitting, itself partly influenced by more or less parallel cases. Burnett (op. cit., p. 90) reminds us, with justice, that "the two-line (here, threeline) interruption that in a sense passes the speaker's wand from one character to another is a commonplace with the chorus, and so is this kind of frank curiosity (cf. e.g. [Aesch.] P.V. 631), whereas there is no precedent for such a speech from the magisterial figure in this kind of scene." Moreover, as she points out, Athene never once interrupts while the two parties in the Eumenides are in debate in the trial scene there. As usual, there are arguments on both sides; we feel more comfortable, pace Dale, in attributing the lines to the Chorus. That said, it seems only fair to report Dale's comment: "both [Theonoe's] silence and the Chorus's speech (at least in these terms) would be impossibly bad-mannered." (We, not Burnett, bracket the name of Aeschylus above.) 1017ff. The blustering speech of Menelaos, wholly in keeping with his character as displayed in the Helen, must have been a severe test of Theonoe's patience. He even ends (l05off.) by threats of murder (of Helen and Theoklymenos, Theonoe's brother) and suicide. It is not until he is seen from afar (later on, in the Messenger's speech) that Menelaos regains anything like his heroic stature. 1072-91 There is no more solemn or moving speech in the play; and in it (besides the striking "shrine of Justice," 1076), 1089-91 are especially worthy of remark, as implying life after death in a way more reminiscent of later religions than is commonly associated with Athens of the fifth century B.C. Dale says that the passage does not go far as "an anticipation of the Platonic doctrine of rewards and punishments after death and of the immortality of the soul" but rather is a "piece of high-toned but vague mysticism appropriate to Theonoe." And, of course, it would be quite inappropriate to draw any inference from this passage as to Euripides' beliefs, if any, in a future state. Rather, Theonoe here is making an abstract of religious speculation, past and present—and to come. What would be intriguing to know is whether there had

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been an upsurge of this kind of "theological" speculation following the enormous casualty lists of the Sicilian expedition; do Theonoe's words link in any way with the Servant's earlier diatribe on prophecy? After castigating the Athenians for their gullibility over divination, is he now giving them a sop via a promise of a kind of immortality? Probably not: there is a remarkably similar passage at Euripides, Supplices, 531-4, and the idea may have been a philosophical commonplace of the time. 1115ff. Menelaos' ideas for their escape are characterized, it will be seen, by their extreme implausibility. 1132 old-fashioned The immediate reference is probably to Sophocles' Electra, 5664, where a similar idea is pondered over; as Dale says, the comment is a "rather mischievous interpolation" by Euripides. It is perfectly possible that Sophocles' Electra had appeared in the previous year. 1178 my name, not me Once again, the Greek has onoma and soma in close juxtaposition. 1186-1252 After the great central scenes of the play—the Recognition, the Trial (or agon), the Intrigue—comes at last relief in the form of a long choral ode; as Dale says, the first proper stasimon of the play. This stasirnon, in the fourth stanza (124off.), contains the only explicit attack on war in the play. But, of course, implicit throughout is the anti-war atmosphere resulting from the knowledge that the Trojan War was fought for a phantom. Had not the Athenians first seen their own dream of Western expansion vanish hideously at Syracuse? 1191 brown, rippling The Greek word is xouthos, which, like some other Greek words, manages to combine several notions in one—color, sound, and movement. 1208 Nauplios

See note on 832.

1221ff. There are many textual uncertainties in this and the following stanza, and at times even the sense required cannot be established with confidence.

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NOTES 1257-1390 The sixth scene; Helen, Theoklymenos, and Menelaos. 1257-60 The effect, to a modern audience, of these lines is likely to be one of awkwardness, even naivete. 1292 Note the double meaning. This scene allows maximum scope for such word play, with Helen frequently saying one thing and meaning another: very typical Euripides. 1294 cowering Poor Menelaos! Cowering, in rags, written off as dead. 1377 Crying We have adopted J. Jackson's admirable emendation (Marginalia Scaenica (Oxford, 1955), 13J-ff.), of goois (crying) for the otiose posi's (husband). 1391-1459 The second stasimon: It is hard to connect the story of the Great Mother, Demeter, plausibly in any way with the Helen. At the risk of seeming disrespectful to Euripides, we have even ventured to wonder whether this lyric ("perhaps reflecting something of the style of contemporary dithyramb"—Dale) was not, so to speak, in Euripides' stockpile and brought out here to fill the gap. Although a tenuous connection with Helen emerges in the final stanza, the ode stands on its own. The final stanza, it should be added, has come down to us in a particularly poor state. Dale, p. 147, comments usefully on the content of the ode, saying (inter alia) that "this is the most explicit indication we have in literature of the process of syncretism at work in fifthcentury Greece." Here the din and wildness of Phrygian cults are grafted on to the myth of the sorrowing Demeter. Verrall's argument (Introduction, p. 17) makes good use of this stasimon. 1400 car The Greek word, sating, is relatively unusual and probably an import from the East. 1448 you failed to honor the name So we render the corrupt and obscure Greek. Whether Helen's offense was one of commission or omission is impossible to determine; we have followed Dale's approach. 1460-1549 The seventh scene: Theoklymenos, Helen, Menelaos. It is unclear at what point Menelaos enters this scene; it must

NOTES

always be remembered that our only indications of who is on the stage of a Greek play at any moment come from the text itself. Here a lacuna has been posited after 1464 (which might have provided us with the answer); otherwise, we must wait for 1470. The words which we have rendered "So here he comes" could as well bear the sense, in effect, "So here he is"; but it seems to us perhaps more likely that he enters with Theoklymenos and the attendants. These dramaturgical points are of importance everywhere, but especially at places like this where they affect one's judgment of the play's degree of burner: is Menelaos being pointed to or talked about? 1550-1608 The third stasimon: the meter, as in the preceding stasimon, is predominantly aeolo-choriambic (Dale, p. 158). Textually this ode is perhaps less obscure and corrupt than the others. 1560 the city that Perseus founded Mycenae—but not specifically intended as the point of disembarkation. 1565-67 the boy whom . . . Apollo killed

Hyacinthos.

1607-8 These lines are very reminiscent of what remains to us of Stesichorus' palinode (see Introduction, p. 4). 1609-1791 The eighth, and final, scene or "act": Theoklymenos, Messenger, Dioskouroi, Chorus. 1613 Ironic, and rather reminiscent of the Servant's words at 644. 1623-1715 This superb Messenger's speech deserves the closest attention; in force, speed, directness, vigor it ranks with the very best of Euripides. There are occasional textual problems, but these cannot obscure the splendid liveliness with which the tale of deceit and disaster is unfolded. 1631f. A passage of notorious difficulty and corruption: we are fairly confident of having provided the sense required by the context. 1661 It must have been a very small bull. After 1664, the Greek appears to refer to a horse as well; but this animal makes no subsequent appearance of any kind, and we have banished it back to the mind of

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NOTES the interpolator whence it sprang. There is no room for superfluous material in so taut and dramatic a narration. 1687 Row about to the right A probable interpretation of a vexed passage. 1716 The nervous disingenuousness of the Chorus is, to say the least of it, understandable. iyi8ff. From here to 1739 the meter changes to the trochaic tetrameter catalectic— a vigorous rhythm which also allows the rapid interchange between Theoklymenos and the Chorus to take place within the confines of single lines. 1740 The deus (or, rather, dei) ex machina makes a timely appearance. 1771 An example of Euripides' favorite practice of explanatory rationalization. The long island which guards the coast of Attica (here called Acte in the Greek) is Makronnisi, off Sounion. 1776 The most promising and plausible meaning of the line, but one which is difficult to extract from the Greek. 1785-91 The anapestic finale of Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchae, and (almost) Medea; the equivalent of ringing down the curtain—the Chorus leaves the Orchestra.

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ACHAEAN, synonym for Greek in Homer and later writers. Achaia was originally a region including southeast Thessaly and part of the northern Peloponnese. ACHILLES, greatest warrior among the Greeks at Troy, Prince of Phthia, and suitor of Helen. His quarrel with Agamemnon and its consequences are the subject of the Iliad of Homer. See also THETIS. Family Tree 7. AEGEAN, sea between Greece and Asia Minor. The Greeks derived its name from Aegeus, King of Athens and father of Theseus, who drowned himself in it. AEROPE, Family Tree 2. AGAMEMNON, King of Mycenae and traditionally supreme captain of the Greeks at Troy. On his return he was murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthos. Family Tree 2. AIAKOS, King of Aegina. Because of his outstanding piety he was made a judge of souls and keeper of the keys of Hades on his death. Family Tree 7. AJAX (AIAS), famous leader of the Salaminians at Troy. He killed himself out of rage at the award of Achilles' arms to Odysseus, another Greek captain. See Family Tree 7. ALEXANDER, SCC PARIS.

APHRODITE, daughter of Zeus and Dione, goddess of love and giver of gaiety, beauty, and all attractions which inspire it. She represents irrational overwhelming passion, which runs counter to the moderation admired by the Greeks. After a quarrel had broken out at the wedding of Peleus and

101

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Thetis among Aphrodite, Athene, and Hera about which of them was the most beautiful, Hermes brought the goddesses to Paris on Mount Ida for him to judge. Aphrodite won by offering him Helen as a bribe. In this way she caused the Trojan War (see HELEN) . APOLLO, son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis, god of music, the sun and prophecy—especially at his oracle in Delphi. See also HYACINTHOS. ARCADIA, mountainous region of the central Peloponnese, inhabited by peoples with a pastoral way of life. ARGOS, poetic synonym for Greece. Argos was a city on the east coast of Greece, and, more generally, the area under Agamemnon's rule. ARTEMIS, virgin goddess of the hunt, fertility and the wilderness. See APOLLO. ATHENE, favorite daughter of Zeus. She is said to have sprung, fully armed, from his head, but she is warlike only in protection of her chosen heroes and cities, especially Athens. Athene is also the virgin goddess of wisdom, crafts, and birds. ATREUS, King of Mycenae. He served up the flesh of the children of his brother, Thyestes, at a banquet in revenge for Thyestes' theft of a golden ram, which was an heirloom of their house. See Family Tree 2. CRETE, island in the Aegean. CYPRIS, title of Aphrodite from her famous shrine in Cyprus. CYPRUS, island at extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean. DANAOS, King of Argos. For this reason "Danaan" is a synonym for "Argive" and hence for "Greek." Family Tree 5. DARDANOS, ancestor of Priam and founder of Troy. Family Tree 4. DIOSKOUROI, the Heavenly Twins who sailed with Jason in the Argo, rescued Helen from Theseus, and were eventually transformed by Zeus into the constellation of Gemini. The story that they killed themselves for their sister's shame is Euripides' invention. See also LEUKIPPIDES, LEDA. Family Tree 3. EGYPT, westernmost of the African lands on the Mediterranean, nearest to Greece but an exotic and little-known country to the ancient Greeks. 102

GLOSSARY

EIDO, see THEONOE. ENODIA, title of Hekate (the Roadside Goddess) from her shrines at crossroads.

EUBOIA, large island on eastern coast of Greece. EUROTAS, river of Sparta. GALENEIA, a sea-nymph personifying calm. GORGOPIS, title of Athene, meaning "of the terrible eyes." GRACES, daughters of Zeus and attendants of Aphrodite. They were the three goddesses of charm and beauty. GREAT MOTHER (Demeter), goddess of agriculture and fertility. Euripides gives her the attendant wild beasts and mountain home of the Phrygian earth-goddess Kybele. See PHERSEPHASSA.

HADES, brother of Zeus and king of the Underworld, which often bears his name. It was set in the center of the earth below the region of darkness called Erebus. There souls after death led a shadowy existence with no pleasure or pain. Only the outstandingly wicked were punished in Tartarus, and only heroes were permitted to enter Elysium or the Isles of the Blest. HEKATE, goddess of the Underworld, of the moon, and of magic, often attended by phantoms and ghosts. See also ENODIA. HELEN, the most beautiful woman in the world, especially admired by the Greeks for her blond hair. Many of the greatest men in Greece were her suitors, and swore to support her husband, whoever he might be. Thus Paris' kidnapping of her from Sparta, with Aphrodite's help, led to an expedition against Troy, drawn from all Greece. After her death she was made divine, as were her brothers. See also APHRODITE, MENELAOS, LEDA. Family Trees 2 and 3. HELENOS, Trojan warrior and prophet. Family Tree 4. HELLAS, The Greeks' own name for their country (and hence, Hellenes for themselves). It was originally part of South Thessaly. HERA, goddess of marriage and all female concerns, wife and sister of Zeus, of whose mistresses and their children she is always jealous. HERMES, son of Zeus and Maia—Arcadian god of travelers and merchants, guide of souls to Hades but especially messenger of the gods. 103

GLOSSARY

HERMIONE, Family Tree 2. HYACINTHOS, son of Amyelas of Lakonia, eponym of Amyelai where his festival is celebrated. Boreas, the North Wind, and Zephyrus, the West Wind, jealous of Apollo's love for him, blew so hard while he and Apollo were competing with a discus, that Apollo's discus hit and killed him. Where his blood touched the ground, the hyacinth sprang up. IDA (MOUNT), wooded mountain near Troy; there was another mountain, of the same name, in Crete. ILION, see TROY. KALCHAS, prophet who accompanied the Greeks to Troy. KALLISTO, Arcadian nymph, loved by Zeus, whom Hera turned into a bear out of jealousy. Zeus eventually set her among the stars as the constellation of the Great Bear. KAPHEREOS, town in Euboeia. KASTOR, See DIOSKOUROI.

LAKEDAIMON, usual name in prose for Sparta. LAKONIA, a region under Spartan rule. LEDA, said to have laid the eggs from which Helen and her brothers were hatched after Zeus had come to her in the shape of a swan. Helen herself, reflecting the scepticism of later Greeks, prefers Tyndareus as her father. Family Tree 3. LEUKIPPIDES, Phoebe and Hilaira, daughters of Leukippus. According to one story, the Dioskouroi carried them off and were killed as they fled by Leukippus' nephews. LIBYA, Greek name for Africa. MAIA, one of the Pleiades and mother of Hermes by Zeus. MENELAOS, King of Sparta. Euripides makes him leader of the Greeks and sacker of Troy (see AGAMEMNON) but follows the Odyssey in the Dioskouroi's promise of Elysium (see HADES). He is said to have tried to kill Helen at the sack of Troy before she persuaded him to a reconciliation. Family Tree 2. MEROPS, King of Ethiopia. MUSES, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory), goddesses of literature, music, and dance, attendants of Apollo. (Hence "museum.") 104

GLOSSARY

NAIAD, river-nymph, possibly here Syrinx, whom Pan pursued in vain, and so invented his pipes, which he called syringes after her. NAUPLIA, town near Korinth, named after ancestor of following with the same name. NAUPLIOS, Greek warrior who helped to wreck the Greek fleet returning from Troy by lighting a false beacon on the cliffs near Kaphereos in Euboia in revenge for the execution of his son Palamedes on evidence planted by Odysseus. NELEUS, Family Tree 6. Antilochos was killed while defending his ancient father Nestor against Memnon, King of Ethiopia. NEREUS, wise god of the Aegean sea, who had the gift of prophecy. Family Tree i. NILE, river of Egypt. Euripides gives Anaxagoras' guess about the annual flooding: the main cause is in fact the summer rains on the Abyssinian plateau. NYMPHS, female nature-spirits, usually young and beautiful. OINOMAOS, King of Pisa, a town east of Olympia in the Peloponnese. He pursued and killed all suitors of his daughter, as there was a prophecy that her husband would kill him, which was fulfilled when, in pursuit of Pelops, he was thrown from his chariot. See also PELOPS. Family Tree 2. ORION, Boeotian giant and great hunter. He was eventually turned into a constellation with his dog, Sirios. PALLAS, title of Athene. PAN, Arcadian son of Hermes; a rustic shepherd god who could inspire a feeling of "panic." PARIS, Hecuba had an ominous dream while carrying him, and the child was exposed. He was found and brought up by shepherds on Mount Ida. Paris died in the sack of Troy. See also HELEN, APHRODITE. Family Tree 4. PELEUS, after his banishment and adventures in Phthia and lolchos, he was given Thetis as a reward for his virtue. See also TELEMON, THETIS. Family Tree 7. PELOPS, won Hippodameia by bribing her father's charioteer to remove the linchpins of his chariot, so that he would not be pursued. See also TANTALOS, OINOMAOS. Family Tree 2. PERSEUS, Arisius, King of Argos, shut Danae up in a subterranean prison after the oracle of Delphi had declared that her son would kill him, but Perseus was born after Zeus had visited 105

GLOSSARY

her in a shower of gold. After killing the Gorgon Medusa with the help of Hermes and Athena, and rescuing Andromeda from a sea-monster, he returned to Argos and fulfilled the prophecy by accident. PHAROS, an island in the bay of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile, later famous for its lighthouse. PHERSEPHASSA (or PERSEPHONE), daughter of Demeter, carried off to the Underworld from among her friends by Hades. Demeter wandered over the earth, searching for her, and not allowing anything to grow, or the streams to run, until Zeus decreed that Phersephassa must return. But as she had eaten some pomegranate seeds, Persephone must stay part of the year in Hades as gueen of the Dead. Her name was never spoken so as not to reawaken Demeter's grief. PHOENICIA, coastal strip of Syria at the extreme western end of the Mediterranean, country of the greatest trading and seafaring nation known to the Greeks. PHOIBOS, title of Apollo in his aspect as god of the sun. PHRYGIAN, synonym for Trojan. Phrygia was part of central and western Asia Minor. PISA, kingdom of Oinomaos near Olympia in Greece. PLEIADES, seven sisters who appealed to Zeus when Orion pursued them, and were turned into stars. PLOUTOS, riches personified. PONTOS, the open sea personified. Family Tree i. POSEIDON, brother of Zeus, god of earthquakes, horses, and above all, the sea. PRIAM, King of Troy, famous for his piety and wisdom. He was killed in the sack of the city. Family Tree 4. PROTEUS, King of Egypt, though he appears in the Odyssey as a minor sea-god. Family Tree 1. PSAMATHE, a sea-nymph. Family Trees 1 and 7. SALAMIS, 1. island in the bay of Eleusis, originally a possession of Aegina, kingdom of Telamon. 2. Greek capital of Cyprus, kingdom of Teucer. SIDON, great Phoenician city on the Syrian coast. SIMOIS, river of Troy. SIRENS, chthonian goddesses, half-woman, half-bird, who charmed sailors onto their island by their song so that they could devour them. They also accompany the dead to Hades and mourn for them and for Phersephassa.

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GLOSSARY

SKAMANDER, river of Troy, also called Xanthos. SPARTA, poetic synonym for Lakedaimon, a Dorian city in the Peloponnese. TANTALOS, served up his son to the Gods at a banquet to see if they would realize what they were eating. He was punished in Tartarus (see HADES) by being made to stand, hungry and thirsty, up to his chin in water, with fruit hanging over his head, only to have it move out of his reach whenever he tried to eat or drink—hence "tantalize." Family Tree 2. TELAMON, banished with Peleus from Aegina by Aiakos for killing Phokos. He settled in Salamis. Family Tree 7. TEUCER, banished by Telamon from Salamis for returning from Troy without his brother (see AIAS). He founded Salamis in Cyprus by Apollo's direction. Family Tree 7. THEOKLYMENOS, King of Egypt and a hater of Greeks. Family Tree 1. THEONOE, virgin prophetess. Family Tree i. THESTIOS, King of Aitolia. Family Tree 3. THETIS, a sea-nymph fated to bear a son greater than his father. When they discovered this, Zeus and Poseidon gave up their courtships of her and bestowed her on Peleus. She left Peleus for interfering when she was dipping Achilles in the Styx, a river of Hades, to make him immortal. For this reason, Achilles' heel, by which she was holding him, remained vulnerable, and he died when Paris' arrow wounded it. Family Tree 7. TROY, city in Asia Minor close to the western entrance to the Dardanelles, sacked by the Greeks after ten years' siege. See also HELEN, APHRODITE. TYNDAREUS, King of Sparta. Family Tree 3. ZEUS, "father of gods and men" in the Homeric formula. The supreme god of the Greeks, whose home was on Mount Olympos, the highest mountain in Greece. His will is identified with destiny; he is the maintainer of law and morality and hence protector of the weak. But he has other aspects as the lover of innumerable goddesses, nymphs, and mortals, the god of the weather, and the king of the large and disobedient community of the gods. 107